A Case of Do or Die
by San Antonio Rose
Summary: A man falls out of John's closet in April of 1987 and sends him on a quest to close the gates of Hell. Yet somehow, in the process of losing his life to save his sons, he finds a life he never thought he'd have. And there may be more than one closet full of secrets waiting for him further down the road—in fact, there may be a whole bunker full of them. (Major character death, AU)
1. Of All the Gin Joints

A/N: This started out as part of "Five Times Azazel's Plan Couldn't Work," but—ah—it turned out rather longer than I expected...

Cover art is by Sienna Vie. The story is complete and will be posted (I hope) on a chapter-a-day schedule.

* * *

A Case of Do or Die  
By San Antonio Rose

Chapter 1  
Of All the Gin Joints

_April 12, 1987_

John woke more or less rested the morning after a salt and burn in Milwaukee and was just about ready to start loading the car to head back to Blue Earth and his boys when the handle of his closet door rattled. He turned to frown at it... and jumped a good six inches backward when it burst open in a flash of light and a man about his own age and size tumbled through it. The man might have been a fellow Jarhead—short, sandy brown hair and a rangy build in an Army surplus jacket and combat boots under his well-worn jeans, and green eyes that had seen a hell of a lot of war—but given the fact that he'd fallen out of John's closet, John didn't want to take any chances. So he had his sidearm aimed at the guy's heart by the time the guy had righted himself far enough to be on his knees.

The guy didn't move any further, just raised both hands in the universal gesture of surrender. "John?"

"Who's askin'?"

"I don't have time to explain. I don't even have time to prove I'm human. Guess you have to take my word on that."

John frowned at that, but then he realized that the light edging the frame of the closet door hadn't faded, and the space behind the kneeling stranger was a black void, like... some kind of portal.

But the stranger didn't give him time to object. "John. Do you love your sons?"

John blinked. "Of course I do."

"Would you do anything to keep them safe? Even if it cost you your life?"

"Yes," got out before John could think about it. "But why—"

"I don't. Have. Time. I just need you to read this." The guy reached into the inside pocket of his jacket with one hand, keeping the other hand in plain sight, and pulled out a packet of papers that he tossed to the floor between them. "There's a quest. Three trials, and you can close the gates of Hell forever. I'm not gonna lie. It will kill you, and Hell will do its damnedest to stop you. But the thing that killed Mary, every damned creature that's gunning for your boys—you can end it _all_. Permanently."

"Why me?"

"Because we can't, my brother and me. Look, just give me time to go back where I came from. Read what's in there. Talk it over with your friends if you want, but... please. I'm beggin' you. You don't want to know what'll happen if you don't."

John lowered his gun a fraction. "Who are you?"

The stranger swallowed before replying hoarsely, "A righteous man."

John didn't know why he bought it. But somehow that answer prompted him to lower his gun all the way. The stranger nodded once, then leapt to his feet and bolted back through the portal, leaving the papers behind. The light flared again, and the closet door banged shut. John waited about two seconds before jerking it open again, only to find the closet the same as it had been five minutes ago—well, apart from the sigil that appeared to have been burned into the thin wood from the inside. He snapped a Polaroid of it before approaching the papers.

There were notes in the margins—notes in _Vietnamese_, a language John could never fully forget how to read, no matter how poorly he'd been able to speak it when he was in theater fifteen years or so ago. He'd look at them in more detail later. But the main English text was exactly what the stranger had said, instructions on how to close the gates of Hell for good. There were notes after the text, too, written by two different people, not the Vietnamese-American whose handwriting made up the main text and whose grammar was too good not to be a native English speaker. Those notes included details about how to get the hellhound for the first trial, how to get into and out of Hell for the second and the spell that would let him carry the innocent soul out of Purgatory with him, and how to cure a demon for the third. They included lists of allies to seek out, names of hunters and other individuals to avoid, sources of supplies and weapons and information, and a particular warning to avoid approaching Metatron because his long seclusion had made him power-mad. (That was John's summary, anyway; the actual note included some long explanation involving Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, and "the Romantic ideal of the poet as god," which went way over his head and gave him unpleasant flashbacks to high-school English to boot.) And they chronicled what would happen after each trial: the purifying fire that seemed to take root as unquenchable fever, the maddening resonance that resulted from proximity to Metatron, the way the final trial would consume him further with every step he drew closer to completion.

There was also a special note about the second trial: _The best we can figure is, since Mary's soul is still stuck in Lawrence, Hell's first attempt to stop you will be to drag her into the Pit. The demons have no way of knowing what you're up to or what the second trial will be, so they'll set it up for you without realizing it. Be forewarned, though—there's no telling what they'll do to her before you get there. She may be in pretty bad shape._ The a in "Mary" looked like it had been converted from an o, though, and the last sentence was followed by what seemed to be several words so thoroughly scratched out that they were wholly illegible. John wondered what that meant and whether the person writing had been about to write "Molly" or some other "Mo-" name...

... or _Mom_.

The question nagged him all the way back to Blue Earth, where Jim insisted on calling in Bobby, Rufus, Caleb, and Bill and Ellen to give their opinions. None of them knew of the mysterious Men of Letters the English notes mentioned, and none of them recognized the symbol that had been burned in the closet door by whatever means the stranger used to open the portal. What information they could verify was accurate, including the identity of Rabbi Isaac Bass and his affiliation with the Judah Initiative; Rufus knew him well. But not one of the hunters knew what to advise John, especially given the very strong likelihood that he would be leaving the boys orphaned if he did go through with the trials.

Jim offered to pray. John thanked him very kindly and made an appointment with Missouri.

Missouri's face was grim when he finally arrived the next evening. "Let me see the papers, John," she said before he even had a chance to speak.

"Hello to you, too," he murmured and handed them over.

She gasped quietly as she took them, eyes widening further every second she held them without reading the actual text. Then she dropped them on the coffee table as if they burned and sank down on the couch, weeping.

"What is it?" he asked, sitting down across from her. "What did you see?"

She shook her head, and it was a long moment before she was able to speak. "He was right. You don't want to know. Terrible, terrible... _mm_. The evil those poor boys have suffered, for him to think the only way out was to ask his own father—"

"WHAT?!"

She nodded. "That's the spell. 'Blood leads to blood.'" Finally, she managed to look him in the eye. "You were right, too. Dean's a protector by nature, but that boy had seen a whole lot too much war by the time he used that spell. More than you'll ever know. More than any man ever should. Hell's gates needed closing, but he just couldn't let Sam do it himself. And Sam wouldn't let Dean do it himself. Seems the bloodline was part of the key, and the boys didn't have anyone else they could trust. So seein' as how you'd have traded your life for Dean's in the end anyway—oh, Lawdamercy, John, it killed him to open that door, to have to ask that of you. He hoped like anything he'd go too far, land in your father's closet, or Mary's father's. He could live with losing them, with never bein' born. But if the ch-ch-choice was b-between y-y-you an' S-s-s-sammy..." She broke down again, sobbing and wailing enough for both of them.

John couldn't keep tears from spilling down his own cheeks. He couldn't make sense of what she was telling him, but he had never seen her so upset, not even the day she'd gone into the ruins of their burned house and come out with the truth. It took him a good minute to pull his thoughts together well enough to voice any question at all. But when he did, what came out was, "Why? Why me, why now?"

She shook her head and hiccupped a couple of times before she had enough control to speak again. "I don't know why you. But if you want to save your boys... you close those gates now, and this thing you're all caught up in, this curse been laid on your family, it all fails. I don't know what comes next, only that you'd stop a powerful lot of evil from hurting them and the rest of the world. And if you don't... they'll die."

"And... the-the thing that killed Mary?"

"Was a demon. Won't kill him, doin' this, but you'd lock him away with all the rest."

He sat back with a deep breath, watching her watch him with tears still streaming down her cheeks. He'd never hunted demons before, not knowingly. He didn't know what a world without demons would be like, whether smarter people than he would consider it a change for the better. His mind was still too scattered from the shock of the revelation that the stranger hadn't been a stranger at all for any of the implications to be clear. And there was the question of vengeance when it came to the demon who killed Mary, whether he could be satisfied with only locking it away and not exacting a life for a life.

And yet he kept coming back to the question his son—his own son, the righteous man—had hardly wanted to ask: _Would you do _anything_ to save your sons? Even if it cost you your life?_

Missouri sniffled loudly. "You're going through with it."

John sighed. "Do I have a choice?"

"John, you listen, now. It don't have to get done right this second. Take some time and love those boys. Give 'em some memories to carry with 'em—the kind you wished your daddy'd give you 'fore he took off."

He flinched, but he knew she had a point. He couldn't just disappear the way P—the way Henry had. There was always the chance that the boys would see his choice as an abandonment, but... hell, knowing he was going to die, it was almost like being handed a diagnosis of terminal cancer or something similar. Or maybe it was like being the one to take the chemo for a cancer that was killing the whole planet. Either way, the chief difference was that he could control how long he had left with the boys, even if he couldn't control the time the trials themselves would take.

He refused to think of it as a suicide mission. It wasn't that he wanted to die—but from what Missouri had said, he was dead one way or another. Stepping in front of this oncoming train now would give him a better chance of stopping it from hitting his boys than if he did it however many years in the future, when it was evidently too close to stop. But that said, he didn't have to take that step right that minute. He could take the time to give the boys some closure first.

Yet the thought of closure brought to mind that note about Mary. "Did the new owners finish rebuilding the house?" he asked aloud.

Missouri nodded slowly. "Mm-hm. And it's been quiet. Hadn't seen that she was still there, but I don't know everything. Just like I don't know if she'll be strong enough to talk to you. But she'll hear. You go talk to her. That's a good idea."

"I will, then."

"And you call me if you need anything. I mean that. Day or night, anything at all, you call me. This is a mighty thing you're doin', and you shouldn't have to face it alone."

"I'll remember. Thank you."

They both stood, and she pulled him into a warm hug, a few more tears spilling from each of their eyes onto the other's shoulder. Then she released him, and he gathered up the papers and left with only a farewell smile and nod of thanks.

It felt strange to drive up to their old house and see it repaired, almost as if the fire had never happened. At first it hardly seemed like the past three years had even happened. Yet as he looked more closely, he could tell that the siding was new, pick out the points where the new roofing gave way to the old, see the branches that were still charred sticking out among the new green leaves near the nursery window.

He wondered, now that Sammy was past toddling, whether he'd ever have tried to find a way to open the window and climb down the tree. Dean had tried it once at about Sammy's age, but he'd only gotten two steps out on the porch roof before he'd lost his nerve and started crying.

Man, that was a lifetime ago that John had pulled his shaking son back to safety. The fire had burned that fear out of Dean, seemed like, or maybe it was just a matter of having grown up enough to not fear any evil except harm to Sammy. The boy had just turned eight a few months back and was a better, steadier shot than many of the raw recruits, fresh from Basic, that John had handled in 'Nam.

He couldn't let his baby's eyes turn into the eyes of the man who'd fallen out of his closet. He _couldn't_.

"Mr. Winchester?" prompted a female voice, startling John out of his reverie. He turned to see one of the house's new owners standing on the front porch; they'd met when he came back for the closing, at the real estate agent's insistence. "Can I help you with something?"

John pulled himself together. "Uh, sorry. I just... happened to be in town, so I thought... the place looks good. Real good."

The lady smiled. "Would you like to come in and see what we've done inside?"

"If... if it wouldn't be intruding. I shoulda called, I know."

"No, it's no trouble! Please do come in."

He let her give him the five-cent tour, and enough of the décor had changed that it didn't really feel like home anymore. Home, honestly, was that chunk of Detroit steel sitting at the curb, much as he hated to admit it. Still, it was hard to go back up those stairs, see the new floor and a few scorch marks remaining in the old, and remember how he'd fled for his life because he couldn't save Mary's.

And then, in the room that had been Sammy's nursery but was now a sewing room, John suddenly felt a distinct chill.

"Strange, isn't it?" the new owner said. "We can't figure out why that happens. And it's only in this room—well, sometimes in the guest room, but not usually in the master or anywhere else. It's almost like the room's trying to make up for having been so hot in that fire!"

John chuckled a little. "Yeah... yeah, that is odd, huh?" But his eyes strayed to the ceiling, as if they expected to find Mary still there, ringed in flame. He knew she wouldn't be, but still.

The new owner noticed, and her smile turned sad. "Would you like a moment?"

He nodded. "Yeah, if... if you don't mind."

"I'll go fix some coffee." She patted his arm and left.

He waited until he heard her start down the stairs, then closed the door and moved further into the center of the room. Then he took a deep breath and let it out again. "Hey, Mar. I, um. I've... been looking for the thing that killed you, and... well, they call us hunters. I kill monsters and ghosts and such now."

The chill deepened in a way he recognized.

"I'm—look, I'm not here to—to do anything. I just—it's a long story, but I've got information on how to close the gates of Hell."

Something cold brushed his arm.

"I've got to do this, Mary. For your sake. For the boys. But there's... there's a chance something could take you. The second trial is delivering an innocent soul from Hell, and my... my source thinks the soul's probably going to be you. So I wanted t-to warn you and to promise I'll come for you as fast as I can. I'll get you out of there, I swear."

There was a pause, and then he very clearly felt a kiss press against his cheek. And a second or two after that, his wedding ring suddenly turned icy cold, fiery hot, and back to normal in quick succession.

"Whoa, what—what was that?"

And for the first time, he heard the barest whisper in his ear: _Entreat me not to leave thee._

He swallowed convulsively a time or two. "Mary..."

Another kiss, and all went still.

He struggled for composure for a long moment before he finally felt able to go down and face the prospect of coffee and polite conversation. Fortunately, there wasn't too much of either waiting for him—the coffee cup was small, and the new owner was sensitive to the fact that he was a widower and didn't try to force much chit-chat. He thanked her for the tour and the coffee and made his escape without too much awkwardness.

It wasn't until he was almost back to his motel with Chinese takeout that he noticed the papers on the seat beside him start to move a little.

He cleared his throat. The movement stopped.

"Mary..."

A cold spot developed right next to him.

He sighed. "Look, save your strength, all right? I'm not starting the trials tomorrow. Missouri—that's the psychic who told me what happened—said I should spend some extra time with the boys first. And I'm going to. You can read over my shoulder or something later."

The chill lessened a little.

"Why are you even here? I... I don't... don't get me wrong, I'm glad, but..."

A cool hand squeezed his arm.

He sighed again. "The boys can't know. Dean knows what I do, but Sammy... he's just a baby. He won't ever know if I can help it."

The papers flew up and smacked him upside the head.

He laughed in spite of himself. "Damn, I've missed you."

Another squeeze, and the cold spot faded out.

It was a good thing John's only plan for the evening had been to eat and sleep, possibly with some TV thrown in. Mary squeezed his arm again after he'd gotten the salt lines set, and after he ate quickly, he found himself talking to not-quite-thin air about everything from hunting to the latest on Sammy and Dean. He wasn't sure he'd ever talked to Mary this much while she was alive. For hours he kept up the monologue, the only sure sign that Mary was listening being the cup of water she kept bringing him every time his voice got hoarse. He even confessed how he felt about things, how the grief and rage and stress and fear were taking their toll, how he worried that something would use him against the boys or them against him, how he always hoped this would be the year he'd end the war by Christmas and how the elusiveness of that goal made him fear that it never would be over, and how very much he missed her still, every damn day.

When he finally faltered to a halt, he heard, _I'm sorry, John. I'm so sorry._

And the storm burst. He cried and cried in a way he hadn't since shortly after the fire, and it felt like she embraced him and shed phantom tears of her own. By the time he'd cried himself out, he was too spent even to change for bed. The last thing he was aware of was the sheet sliding up over him.

He woke the next morning to someone pounding on his door. Bleary-eyed, he stumbled to answer and was almost knocked over when Missouri pushed the door all the way open. "I brought breakfast," she said as she charged past him. "It's in the car, and I suggest you eat it out there."

"Whu—?" John mumbled but staggered out to Missouri's car to retrieve the coffee and bacon-egg croissant—from a bakery, not McDonald's—that were sitting on her front passenger seat, then plopped down on the Impala's hood to consume them. A few sips of coffee and a couple of bites of sandwich cleared his head enough for him first to realize that he'd forgotten to shut the room door and then to make out Missouri talking to someone quietly.

"You listen here, Mary-girl. This. Was. Not. Your. Fault."

John was so startled, he almost dropped his coffee.

"No, now—I know that. ... It wouldn't have mattered, girl. ... Even if you'd lived—you hush now. Listen to Missouri. ... All right. They would have found some way to force this on your babies no matter what happened to you. Dean wasn't lyin'; it's bigger than the four of you. ... Then they would have found some other way. ... _Mary_. ... I know that. I know you did. But girl, you got to face facts. It is what it is. And John's got to do this. ... Child, have you _met_ the man you married?!"

He couldn't suppress a snort at that. Missouri had to know he could hear her anyway; hers was the kind of voice that carried regardless of volume.

"Well, honey, I think it's foolish and reckless and absolutely the best thing you can do. He needs you. But he wasn't lyin', either. You save your strength, 'cause you will need every bit of it when the time comes. And don't you go blamin' yourself, now. You weren't to know. You just love your man and your babies while you can, 'cause it ain't every woman gets even this kind of second chance. ... All right, baby girl. You take care, now. And what I told him, I'm gonna tell you, too. You need me, you call, however you can."

John didn't have to be psychic to know the conversation was finished. So he scarfed down the rest of the croissant and stood just as Missouri came out and pulled the door most of the way to, shaking her head.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

She sighed. "Poor girl, been readin' those papers even though you told her not to. She grew up a hunter, you know—well, you don't, since she never told you that you remember."

"A hunter? _Mary?!_" Yet even as he struggled to get his mind around the idea, a flash that felt like long-suppressed memory came to him, an image of Mary with a short silver sword in her hand, facing off against a pale woman with striking red hair like... like she'd been fighting such things all her life. When had that happened, and why couldn't he remember more than that flash?

Missouri took another step toward him, her face serious. "John. Don't you go blamin' her. She wanted you safe, all of you. She thought this was the way. She was wrong, but I told her the truth just now—the Powers That Be would find some way to force you and your boys into this life no matter what she did. And there ain't no use cryin' over it now. You can't change the past, but you can change what's comin'. You shut this down, and don't let anybody tell you different."

He sighed and nodded. "Thanks, Missouri."

She pulled him into another long, warm hug, then let him go. "Go on, now. She's about done cryin', ready to go."

He nodded again. "Thanks."

She squeezed his arm and went back to her car, and he pulled himself together and went back inside just in time to see the papers that were scattered across the table gather themselves up neatly.

"Mornin'," he rumbled as he walked up to the table and was greeted by a cold kiss on his cheek. "Let me get myself presentable, and we can go."

Mary kissed his cheek again and went back to straightening. By the time he'd showered, shaved, and dressed, his bag was packed and ready to go, and the papers were resting on top. He smiled, gathered everything up, and carefully scuffed the salt line on his way out the door.


	2. Play It, Sam

Chapter 2  
Play It, Sam

To be perfectly honest, John hadn't paid that much attention to the school calendar when he enrolled Dean in the elementary school in Blue Earth at the end of Spring Break. He'd had a month's worth or so of hunts planned out, all of them within a day's drive of Blue Earth, and had intended to be on the road again by now; he hadn't wanted to impose on Jim any longer than he had to, although Jim always insisted they were welcome to stay as long as they wanted. So John really didn't know when Dean's remaining breaks were or when school let out for the summer. The fact dawned on him about halfway through the eight-hour drive back to Blue Earth from Lawrence.

He didn't mention it to Mary, though. She'd probably smack him upside the head again.

Well, it was a Friday. He had left Lawrence by 8, which would get him back to Jim's between 4 and 4:30, which meant Sammy should be up from his nap by the time John arrived and Dean... might or might not be home yet. John couldn't remember when school let out or how long it took the bus to get Dean to Jim's house. That was embarrassing—he knew he _had_ been there at least once when Dean came home from school, but what had he been doing at the time? Playing with Sammy? Or... no, more likely hunt prep.

Was he seriously starting to let the hunt take precedence over his boys?

He tried to dismiss the question with the thought that being at Jim's meant he wasn't solely responsible for the boys for the moment and that things had been busier than usual lately. Dean still wasn't talking much, though he wasn't completely silent anymore and would chatter with Sammy well enough, but John thought he'd remembered to keep asking the boy about his day at school and about homework every day. He tried to, at any rate. He knew he'd remembered birthdays; Sammy's was coming up on the 2nd, and for Dean's they'd actually done pizza and a movie, with Bobby taking Sammy off to the library while John and Dean caught _Star Trek IV_ at the dollar theater. He'd even turned down a couple of hunts in February while the boys were sick. He wasn't _that_ terrible of a father. Yet having just come from Lawrence, the image of the old house still fresh in his mind and Mary's presence still close though not so obvious, he wasn't able to stop himself from thinking about what things would be like if—well, If. Mary would have been on top of school schedules even if John wasn't. But he... well, he'd want to be, if he remembered, so he could get time off when the boys weren't in school and they could do things as a family. He'd for sure be keeping tabs on Little League schedules so he could make as many games as he could.

He should have let Dean go out for Little League in Blue Earth instead of arguing that the time would be better spent on homework, watching Sammy, and training with Jim.

He hadn't lied to Mary—he wanted the boys safe, and Sammy as sheltered as possible, but he'd become terrified of what would happen if at least Dean wasn't prepared, couldn't back him up or defend Sammy if something went wrong, or what would happen if something put them in a situation where their closeness became their undoing. Looking at it now, in the clear light of day, he suspected that was bleed-through from 'Nam. He never had been good at the touchy-feely stuff, but in 'Nam, he had had to keep at least some distance between himself and his men so he could give the tough orders and not be utterly crushed when the inevitable casualties and fatalities came. Since the fire, without Mary to help him balance... hell, he didn't know how to be a dad instead of a platoon commander. Not really. Not enough to keep from falling into those old relational habits.

Funny how a one-minute glimpse of the future and the prospect of his own death could change his priorities so fast.

Mary seemed to know what he was thinking, or at least that he was thinking something depressing, because he slowly became aware of her sitting right next to him, the way she had when they were first married. He still couldn't see her, but he felt that familiar slight pressure along his right side as she leaned into him a little—not much, just enough to remind him that she was there.

"Miss you, sweetheart," he whispered.

She put her head on his shoulder and left it there the rest of the way to Blue Earth.

When he finally pulled into Jim's driveway, he shut the engine off and sat for a moment to pull himself together. It was a short moment, however, because mere seconds after the engine noise ceased, he heard, "DAD'S HOME! DAD'S HOME! DEAN, DEAN, DAD'S HOME!"

He chuckled, and she squeezed his arm.

Barely had he gotten one foot out the door than he had his arms full of wiggling, giggling, slightly dirty Sammy. "Hey, kiddo," he said, smiling and rubbing the boy's back a little.

Sammy looked up at him. "Dad, can me an' Dean do the Easter egg hunt on Sunday, _pleeeeeze?_"

John blinked, startled. "... it's Easter?"

Sammy nodded vigorously, but it was Dean's voice that answered as he came around the front of the car. "Yes, sir. Sunday. I didn't have school today, so we've been helping Pastor Jim get the lilies and stuff ready. I don't have school Monday, either. He said we can hunt eggs with the rest of the kids if we want. But I... didn't know if we'd be here, so I said we'd have to ask you."

John sighed, got out and shut the door, and gave Dean a hug. "I'm sorry, boys. I lost track of time. Yes, we'll be here, and yes, you can do the egg hunt. In... fact... m-maybe we should plan t-to go to church, too."

Both boys gasped.

"Now, Dean, when's the last day of school here?"

Dean swallowed hard. "Um, the Friday after Memorial Day. We have Memorial Day off."

"All right. I don't know yet if we should plan to stay that long, but we'll for sure stay through Sammy's birthday."

Sammy cheered and hugged John's leg as hard as he could.

But Dean looked worried. "Dad, is everything okay?"

"Something came up with work. But we can talk about it after supper."

"'Kay. I just... you actually wanting to go to church..."

John nodded. "I know. Been a long time. We'll talk about it after supper, I promise. Why don't you show me what you boys have been working on today? You said something about lilies."

"They're locked up in the sack-a-christie," Sammy volunteered.

John blinked. "The what?"

Dean rolled his eyes and huffed. "The _sacristy_, Squirt. Get it right."

"Daaaad," Sammy whined.

John had to fight the urge to roll his own eyes. "All right, look, go tell Pastor Jim I'm here, will you, Sammy?"

"Okay!" And Sammy ran off.

Dean barely waited until Sammy was out of earshot to turn back to John. "Dad—"

"_Son_. I. Said. _Later_."

"But I thought you didn't believe in God."

"I didn't. Now... hell, I dunno. Like I said, something came up. You can ask me all the questions you want after supper. But we are not discussing this part of it while Sammy is awake. Do you understand me?"

Dean nodded unhappily. "Yes, sir."

John put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "There is one thing I want to say now, though, before I forget. I should have let you go out for Little League when we first got here. I know it's too late now, but I still owe you an apology."

Dean's worried expression deepened into a frown. "Dad, are you okay?"

For answer, John pulled out his silver pocket knife and pricked his thumb with it, then showed Dean how the small wound bled without burning.

Dean sighed and relaxed somewhat. "Sorry."

"It's okay, son. I'm acting a little off. I know that. There's a reason, and I'll tell you. I just don't want to talk about it standing out here."

Dean pulled himself together and nodded again. "Yes, sir. Need help bringing things in?"

John shook his head as he opened the back passenger door. "Nah, not really, but thanks. It's just the one bag and some papers." He reached in and grabbed his things to show Dean the truth of that statement.

Before Dean could ask about the papers, Sammy returned with Jim. "Glad you're back, John," Jim said. "Sammy tells me you're thinking about coming to the Easter Eucharist."

John nodded. "Dunno how I'll do at all the Christian aerobics stuff."

Jim laughed. "You don't have to. Just try to sing on key."

John chuckled.

Jim then looked down at the kids. "Boys, would you excuse us?"

"'Kay!" Sammy chirped and took off for the backyard.

Dean shook his head fondly and followed.

Jim had a better sense of earshot than Dean had and waited until both boys had gone around the corner of the house to step closer to John. "Ordinarily, I'd be thrilled about finally getting you into church, but I'm not thrilled about the reason why I suspect you're even considering it now."

John sighed.

"So you are going through with it."

"Not much choice."

"How soon?"

"Fall. After Dean's back in school. Missouri's idea, but it's a good one. Figure I'll leave 'em with Bill and Ellen, if that's okay with them."

"Have you asked?"

"Harvelle? Not yet. Want to talk to the boys first."

Jim nodded slowly. "And until then? Sammy said you plan to stay at least through his birthday."

"Yeah. No reason not to."

"And after that?"

John's eyes strayed toward the backyard. "Thought we'd go through the Rockies. Take our time, see some stuff. Maybe go to the Grand Canyon, maybe Disneyland. No hunts, just... road trip."

"That sounds like a plan." Jim paused. "John, I'm feeling a bit of a chill. What else aren't you telling me?"

John couldn't quite look Jim in the eye. "I stopped by the house."

"_John._"

"I just wanted to talk, tell her about the second trial, but... she's tied to my wedding ring now." John did meet Jim's eyes then. "I don't know how, and that's the truth. It just happened. I don't know if she did something or what."

Jim sighed. "And knowing you, you're not going to tell the boys."

"What for? It would only open old wounds."

"They'll figure it out."

"No, they won't."

"She's their _mother_, John. You think she won't hover, make the most of the time she has?"

John really didn't want to discuss it.

Jim saw the face he made and threw up his hands. "All right, all right, fine. They're your kids. And speaking of which, the lilies are in the sacristy, but the boys also helped me with the decorations for the parish hall for after the vigil tomorrow night, if you want to come see that."

John nodded once decisively. "Sounds good."

Jim took John's things into the house and called for the boys to join them as John made his way toward the parish hall. Once they'd all met up there, Sammy grabbed John's hand and pulled him through the hall to show him everything, chattering non-stop. John actually paid attention and made a point to tell the boys they'd done a good job. Sammy was thrilled, and Dean looked like he might have a heart attack.

The fact that John scuffed the salt line on the way into the parsonage and waited until Mary had squeezed his arm to let him know she was through before he fixed the break didn't get past Dean, either. But Jim noticed that Dean had noticed and casually asked, "Want some water, John?"

John nodded. "Sure. Water sounds great."

Now, whether or not Sammy knew that the carafe by the door held holy water wasn't clear to John, but he knew that Dean knew. So he pretended not to notice that Dean was pretending not to watch Jim pour a glass of water from that carafe, hand it to John, and wait while John drank the whole thing.

"Needed that," John said as he handed the glass back to Jim. "Thanks."

Jim nodded once and smiled, and Dean relaxed a little more.

After supper, Jim insisted on doing the cleanup himself while John took the boys into the living room to talk with them. Dean was less worried than he had been now that _replaced by shapeshifting monster_ and _possession_ were off the list of possible explanations for the shift in John's behavior, but he was still visibly confused and concerned, and that in turn was confusing Sammy. So John braced himself and sat the boys down on the couch, then sat down on the coffee table facing them.

Dean swallowed hard. "You said this was something with work?" he prompted.

John sighed and nodded. "First things first. Whatever happens, we'll be okay. I don't want you worrying."

Dean nodded warily. Sammy just looked at him, puzzled.

"Long story short, I'm going to have to quit my job."

Both boys gasped.

"Now, there's one last project I have to take care of before I can do that. It's a big project, and I'll probably have to be away for quite some time. But there's no deadline, so I'm planning to wait until after this summer. I've got a lot of vacation time coming, and I'm gonna take it so we can spend some time together."

"And we can't go with you when you start?" Dean asked.

"No. It's... I'm probably going to have to travel a lot, more than usual. I can't keep you out of school for that."

"So where are we staying?"

"If everything works out, with the Harvelles."

"NO!" Sammy cried. "I don't WANNA! I wanna stay with Pastor Jim or Unka Bobby!"

"Sammy," John began sternly, but Mary squeezed his shoulder. He sighed and tried a gentler tone. "Bobby's salvage yard isn't a safe place to play, and we've already stayed with Pastor Jim longer than we should. Bill and Ellen have the space, and they already have a daughter."

"That's what I _mean_, Dad! I don't wanna hafta play with a dumb baby!"

And suddenly John realized what the real problem was. Sammy was used to being the center of attention as the youngest, but darling little Jo was two years younger—he was _jealous_. John stopped himself from chuckling and tried to think how best to get around that problem. "You're right, Sport. Jo is just a baby. She doesn't have a big brother, either, not like you. Don't you think she needs a brother?"

"SHE CAN'T HAVE DEAN."

Dean clapped a hand over the ear closest to Sammy. "Dude, quit yelling."

John couldn't hold back the chuckle this time as he shook his head. "No, no, that's not what I meant. Dean's your big brother. Couldn't you be Jo's big brother?"

Mary squeezed his shoulder again, and he could almost see her _You've got him now_ wink and smile in his mind's eye.

Sammy blinked rapidly as he thought about the idea. "Well... yeah, I guess... but... but what happens when we leave?"

John paused. "We'll figure that out when we get there."

Both boys were too bright not to understand the implications of that non-answer. Dean paled, and Sammy's eyes went saucer-wide.

"Dad," Dean breathed. "Y-you're not—"

John put a hand on each boy's cheek. "Don't. Worry. Whatever happens, promise me you won't worry."

Sammy gulped. "H-h-how l-long do you th-think you'll be gone?"

"I don't know. Could be a long time."

"Will... will you be back for Christmas?"

John sighed. "If I can, I'll try."

Sammy burst into tears and jumped up to throw his arms around John's neck. John held him close and rubbed his back gently.

"I'on' wan' you to go," Sammy sobbed into John's shoulder.

"I know, baby boy. I know. I'm not going anywhere tonight, I promise."

"You gonna stay for my birfday?"

"Yep. Not going farther than Bobby's before then."

"Why you gotta go 'way?"

"I have to, Sammy. I wish I didn't. But I have to."

That prompted a quiet howl, and Sammy's arms tightened around John's neck. John picked him up and turned to sit on the couch beside Dean, who was bravely fighting his own tears. Once they were settled, John wrapped the arm that wasn't supporting Sammy around Dean's shoulders and pulled him closer, and Dean miserably snuggled against John's side and returned the hug with both arms.

"I know I don't say this much," John whispered. "But I do love you boys, more than anything in the world. And I really do wish like anything that I didn't have to do this. If there were any other way..." His voice broke, and he stopped before he could start crying himself.

And there they sat, snuggling and sniffling and not saying anything, until Sammy's muscles started to go slack and John felt a damp spot develop on his shoulder. He excused himself to Dean and carried Sammy upstairs and put him to bed. Then John changed into the shirt he planned to sleep in and came back down to find Dean still sitting listless on the couch. He sat down beside Dean and pulled him back into a cuddle.

"You got questions, ask 'em," he said quietly.

"Is it a hunt?" Dean asked equally quietly.

"Kind of. More like a quest."

"Why can't we help?"

John sighed heavily. "I know you want to. I know you would if you could, and I'd let you. But this is not the kind of quest you boys can handle. Hell, not sure if even I can handle it, but... I'll be facing stuff I don't want anywhere near the two of you. Besides, only one man can do all the tasks, or it won't work."

"And you want to go to church because you think you won't survive."

"No, that's—I'm thinking about going to church because this quest... I have to do it in God's name. That's part of the deal. He set it up, and there's this password I have to say at the end of each step that's something like, 'We work as Your instrument.' So since it looks like God really does exist... guess I need to get on His good side."

Dean leaned against John a little more heavily and was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he asked, "Why's it have to be you, Dad?"

"I don't know, son. But this is one I can't pass off to some other hunter. It came to me. So I gotta go through with it."

Dean's breath hitched.

"I know. I know."

"F-first Mom... an' now..."

"Dean, hey. You're not losin' me yet. We've got a long summer to go first."

"D-d-did... if I..." Dean choked and sobbed. "I'm sorry, Dad, I'm sorry..."

"_Hey._" John pulled Dean onto his lap and held him much the same way he'd held Sammy earlier. "You didn't do anything wrong. This isn't your fault. This quest—the whole reason I'm doing it is to keep you and Sammy safe, because I love you. And that's why I'm not starting it right now. If I'm... I mean, whatever happens, I just... I w-want... just one good summer, God, that's all I'm askin'." He didn't know why that had come out as a sobbed prayer, but he wasn't taking it back now.

The hand that landed on his shoulder this time surprised him with its warmth, and he couldn't figure out why until Jim spoke. "I don't think the Almighty will begrudge you a few more months with your children, John."

John's arms tightened around Dean like they had a mind of their own. "Three years. Three damn years of non-stop nightmares. Why? Why me? Why us?"

"I don't know. I don't have any answers. This collar doesn't make me God, and it doesn't let me read His mind. But I'm here, for you and for the boys."

Dean snuffled wetly. "Thanks, Pastor Jim."

Jim reached over and rubbed Dean's arm gently, then patted John's shoulder again and left as quietly as he'd come in.


	3. We'll Always Have Paris

Chapter 3  
We'll Always Have Paris

Both boys were quiet and subdued at breakfast Saturday morning, at least until John suggested going shopping for Easter clothes. Sammy perked up a little at that.

"Can we afford it?" Dean asked.

John shrugged. "Pretty sure there's a decent resale shop here in town, should have pretty good bargains."

Dean grimaced. "Don't really want a suit."

"So we won't get you a suit. Slacks and a sweater vest you could wear to school, like for pictures."

Dean blinked. "But—"

"Dean."

"Yes, sir."

"I want a suit!" Sammy piped up. "I'm a big boy!"

John laughed. "You are—almost four! A suit will make you look all grown up."

Sammy beamed and wiggled happily in his seat.

Jim had overheard plenty of mothers conversing about resale shops and was able to pull together a quick list of recommendations, so after breakfast dishes were done, John and the boys were off. Dean and Sammy were still quieter than usual and stuck closer than usual, Sammy even holding John's hand without prompting most of the time, but John did eventually get even Dean to pick out a few things he liked that were well within their budget. John found some school clothes that Dean would probably grow into by fall, too, including some new-ish jeans and some T-shirts with logos of bands they both liked, which finally prompted Dean to smile. They picked out a nice grey suit for Sammy that even Mary loved, along with some play clothes that should last the summer. And at Jim's insistence, John got a couple of new shirts for himself, as well as a tie.

They actually went to church on Sunday, and the roof didn't cave in. In fact, John managed to both stay awake and pay attention through the entire sermon. The little old ladies all cooed over Sammy, which alternately pleased and terrified him, and a couple of Dean's school friends succeeded in prodding him into having some fun during the egg hunt after church. Mary slipped her arm through John's as they stood watching the boys run around, and he could tell she was enjoying it as much as he was.

Monday was mostly a day for bumming around the house and watching TV, except when Sammy decided he wanted ice cream. John did call and talk things over with Bill Harvelle, who agreed to take the boys when the time came, but mostly he spent time just being with his sons. Tuesday John drove Dean to school and then began working with Jim on researching omens from September and October of 1977 that would give him a lead on where to find someone whose deal was about to come due. But when he and Sammy went to pick Dean up from school, he got an unpleasant surprise. Dean came out looking worried and didn't get in the car.

"My teacher wants to talk to you," he said when John rolled down the window.

John bit back a curse. "Okay. Take Sammy to the playground; I'll come get you when we're done."

Dean nodded. "Yes, sir. C'mon, Squirt," he said as he opened the back door.

Sammy wriggled out of the back seat and took Dean's hand as John drove off to find a parking place. The boys stood on the sidewalk talking until John waved them toward the playground, then reluctantly walked off.

"Mr. Winchester," said Mrs. Winthrop as he walked into Dean's classroom. "I'm glad you're here. I'm worried about Dean."

John blinked and felt Mary slip a hand around his arm. "Why? Is he in trouble?"

"No, no, but—do sit down." As John sat, so did Mrs. Winthrop. "Dean's been acting very depressed all day, and he hardly speaks unless I ask him a direct question. Has he been feeling all right this weekend?"

John sighed. "Well, he's not sick, if that's what you mean, but... we got some bad news last week. The boys are taking it pretty hard."

Mrs. Winthrop frowned. "What sort of bad news? Have you lost your job or something?"

"Worse than that. Look, I... I haven't come right out and told the boys this, but... I've been diagnosed with cancer. And it's probably terminal."

Mrs. Winthrop gasped. "Oh, my. I'm so, so sorry."

"I'm still in the process of making arrangements. My oncologist wants me to head down to MD Anderson in Houston to see if some experimental treatment can knock this thing out, but he said waiting three or four months probably won't hurt, so... when's... when's the earliest I could withdraw Dean and not have it be a problem next year? I've got family in Nebraska; the boys will be staying with them."

"You're wanting to get an early start on summer vacation?"

John nodded. "If we may. Dean's brother turns four in a couple weeks, so we'll stay that long for sure, but..."

Mrs. Winthrop nodded thoughtfully. "I certainly don't blame you for wanting more time with both boys. Well, we won't be doing much the last week of school, but let's go check with the principal to see whether we can let Dean go even sooner. He's had perfect attendance since you moved here, but I don't know about before that."

"Okay. Thanks."

The principal and guidance counselor were equally shocked and sympathetic, and after some haggling and consultation with the school nearest the Roadhouse, John got permission to withdraw Dean at the end of the school day on May 15. The school even agreed to get Dean's records sent to Nebraska so John wouldn't have to worry about that end of things; Ellen would only need to get Dean registered the week before classes started. John had half hoped they could leave even sooner but had known that the 15th was probably most realistic, so he thanked everyone and left satisfied.

_Cancer?_ Mary breathed in his ear as he headed toward the playground. _Really?_

"What would you have said?" he murmured back, moving his lips as little as possible.

She huffed but didn't answer.

"What, you never invented sick uncles and dying grandfathers when you were hunting?"

A cold spot developed that matched her icy tone. _I hated hunting._

He didn't know what to say to that, so he just sighed and didn't say anything.

Dean was half-heartedly trying to teach Sammy how to play foursquare when John reached the playground. Sammy didn't look very enthusiastic about trying to bounce a ball that was almost as big as he was, either. Both boys abandoned the game and came running as soon as they saw John.

"What happened?" Dean asked as they ran up to him. "Is everything okay?"

John nodded and put a reassuring hand on Dean's shoulder while Sammy grabbed hold of his other hand. "Yeah, everything's fine, son. Your teacher was just worried about you."

"Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for. I needed to talk to her anyway, see when we can leave."

Dean looked oddly hopeful. "And?"

"Looks like we'll be starting summer vacation two weeks early."

Dean sighed in relief and hugged John. "Thanks, Dad."

"What, don't you like school?"

"No, it's not that, it's just—if you need me..."

"Aw, Deano." John hugged Dean to him a little more tightly. "What I need you to do these next four weeks is keep your studies up. I'll tell you if that changes. Deal?"

Dean nodded. "Deal."

"All right. What say we go get a slushie?"

Sammy cheered, and Dean laughed quietly and let go of John. But John kept his arm around Dean's shoulders as he led the boys out to the parking lot.

* * *

Dean tried to put a brave face on things for the next two weeks. He did his best at school, although he shrugged off any offer the adults made of "talking about it"—he was doing well to talk at all, thanks. He played with Sammy even when he didn't feel like doing anything. He helped Pastor Jim with the dishes. He helped Mrs. Pasker when she came to clean the house. He helped Dad with research whenever he could and yardwork when Dad declared it needed doing. He even went to church and sang all the songs and stood up and sat down at all the right times and let the old ladies pinch his cheeks. He was as good as he could possibly be.

But nothing got rid of the horrible truth that nobody wanted to acknowledge.

Dad was going to die.

Dad knew he knew, of course. Dad even tried to tell him he didn't have to try so hard, that it really truly wasn't about Dean being good enough or not. But Dean wasn't sure Dad understood his need to _make it better_, and... well, he couldn't make the big things better no matter how he tried, but he could make himself better, or at least try to.

He couldn't afford to make any mistakes. Not now. If he did... he might just break into more pieces than Humpty Dumpty, and everyone knew how that story ended. And if he was too smashed up to fix, what would happen to Sammy and Dad?

Pastor Jim's church had a preschool that Sammy had been going to once a week, and Pastor Jim invited all of Sammy's friends over for his birthday. Dean baked the cake all by himself, and Dad helped him frost it. And everything was great—except some of the parents didn't understand that "No Presents" meant _no presents_ and bought Sammy all kinds of stuff that they could never take with them.

Dean was just about to lose his cool when Dad put a hand on Dean's shoulder and said they could send everything to the Harvelles, to be waiting for Sammy when they got there in August. At that, Dean excused himself to the bathroom and _did_ lose it, because Sammy got toys and he didn't, but toys reminded him too much of Before, and August meant The End, and... well, everything. And then he cried some more because he'd probably ruined Sammy's birthday. Then he washed his face and practiced smiling a couple of times and finally walked out of the bathroom.

And straight into Dad.

But all Dad did was rub Dean's shoulder and ask, "You gonna make it, son?"

Dean nodded.

"Okay. Sammy hasn't missed us yet, but he's probably about to. Let's go."

Dean swallowed hard and squared his shoulders. "Okay."

"That's my brave little soldier." Dad squeezed his shoulder again and ushered him back outside with everyone else.

After the party and all through supper, Sammy couldn't stop talking loudly about everything that had happened and how it was "the bestest birfday _ever_." Dean privately thought Sammy was overdoing it just a little, but it had been a pretty awesome party as fourth birthday parties went, with lots of Star Wars stuff and some okay games. Dad talked during supper about maybe watching a movie and letting Sammy pick—Pastor Jim had a VHS player—but they'd just finished eating when Uncle Bobby called and, after wishing Sammy a happy birthday, wanted to talk to Dad. Dean took his cue and herded Sammy off to get his bath and get ready for bed. Dad was still on the phone when Sammy finished getting his PJs on, so Dean declared it bedtime.

But as Sammy was climbing into bed, he suddenly got serious. "Dean? Can I aks you something?"

Dean sat down on the edge of the bed. "Sure. What?"

"Who's that lady?"

Dean blinked. "What lady?"

Sammy huffed. "You _know_—the lady's been with Dad ever since he came back."

Dean frowned. "Sammy, what are you talking about?"

"The _lady_, Dean! The pretty lady! She gots yellow hair and a white dress an'—an' lookit, she's right there!" Sammy pointed behind Dean.

Dean turned and didn't see anything at first. But then it got cold—that had been happening a lot since Dad got back—and then it got colder, and the lights flickered, and then... then he saw...

"Dean?" Sammy squeaked.

"Mom," Dean breathed.

Mom smiled and mouthed, _Hi, boys._

Sammy gasped. "You're _Mom?_"

Mom nodded and walked closer to the bed. _Happy birthday, Sammy._ She bent down and kissed the top of Sammy's head.

Sammy shivered. "Are—are you a ghost?"

Mom nodded.

"But... where were you? Why couldn't I see you before?"

_Shh._ She kissed him again. _I'm sorry. Sleep tight, sweetheart._ Then she looked at Dean and nodded toward the window, the way she used to do when she wanted to take him outside.

Dean bit his lip and nodded. Mom nodded back and faded away.

"Dean?" Sammy asked as Dean got up. "What's... what's goin' on?"

"I dunno," Dean confessed quietly. "But stay here, okay? I'll go find out."

Sammy caught his arm. "Be careful."

Dean hugged him. "I will, Squirt. Promise."

Dad and Pastor Jim were still in the kitchen talking as Dean edged silently toward the front door. A cold hand squeezed his shoulder when he was almost there, which reminded him that he needed to break the salt line. But nobody heard him open the door or close it behind him again once he'd slipped outside.

Dean wasn't stupid, though. He didn't go any further than the hood of the car, which he climbed up on and sat down. Then he felt the metal get cold as Mom sat down beside him. He couldn't see her, but he felt her next to him, shivered as he felt her hand card through his hair.

"Mom?" he whispered.

_I'm here, Deanie_, he barely heard. _And I'm so sorry._

"Why are _you_ sorry? I... I sh-shoulda..."

_No, baby boy. You couldn't have saved me. I... did something I shouldn't have, and I forgot something I shouldn't have._

"Mom, don't..."

_I'm not saying I deserved it, Dean. I'm saying it isn't your fault. And what's happening with Dad isn't your fault, either. You've been very good and very brave, and I'm so proud of you. But none of this is your fault. This is bigger than us._

Dean's eyes started to sting. "What's Dad gonna do?"

_He's going to close the gates of Hell forever_.

"Why now?"

_If he waits, it'll be too late to save you and Sammy._

"Save us from what?"

_I don't know, angel. All I know is, it'll be horrible. Worse than losing Dad and me._

"But why Dad?"

_I don't understand it, either. But I do understand that he loves you very much—so much he's willing to die for you._

"I don't _want_ him to die for us! I want him to _live_ for us!"

_I know. He wants to live, too. But Deanie, this time there isn't a choice. Your dad's a Marine; he knows when a battle's got to be fought. I don't want you to lose him, either, but this time I think he's right._

"S-s-so why are you here?"

_Because I don't want him to fight alone._

Dean couldn't help it. He burst into tears.

Mom hugged him and rocked him. _Oh, Deanie._

"Mom... I've missed you so much..."

_Shh. It's okay. I'm here._ And then she started humming "Hey Jude," which only made him cry harder. She rocked and he cried until, just about the time he couldn't cry anymore, Dad came running outside and he heard, _It's okay, John. He's okay._

Dean didn't really pay attention to what Dad said and what Mom said after that, but he felt Dad's warm arms pick him up off the frosty hood of the car and carry him back inside and put him in bed with Sammy. Sammy asked something, and Dad replied something reassuring, but Dean was almost asleep and didn't really hear what it was.

But he didn't think the kiss Dad pressed on his temple before Sammy tried to use him for a teddy bear was all his own imagination.

* * *

When John finally looked outside to see Dean sobbing on the hood of the Impala, leaning against something that didn't seem to be there, he raced outside and would have lit into Mary for revealing herself had she not snapped _He's __grieving__ for __both__ of us!_ before he could get out half a sentence. Dean was verging on hypothermic when John picked him up but was just awake enough to curl up against John's chest the way he had done as an infant. And John felt about two feet tall for letting things get to the point where Dean felt more comfortable breaking down in the arms of his mother's ghost than showing any weakness in front of John or Sammy. He'd known Dean was struggling, especially after the breakdown over Sammy's presents that Dean had hidden as best he could, but still... it shouldn't have had to come to this.

Sammy was sitting on the bed, chewing on his thumbnail, and looking toward the window when John carried Dean into the bedroom, but he gasped when he saw them. "Is Dean okay, Dad?"

John nodded. "Just cold and tired."

"He was gonna go talk to Mom."

"Yeah. Yeah, they... they talked. I think they needed to. It didn't hurt him, but..."

"Mom's just really cold."

John didn't ask how Sammy knew that. He just lay Dean carefully on the bed and pulled the covers up over him. "Dean's gonna need lots of cuddles tonight to help him get warm again. Think you can do that for me, Sport?"

Sammy nodded seriously. "I can do that, Dad."

John squeezed the back of Sammy's neck and smiled. "Good boy." Then he kissed both boys on the head and started to leave.

When he looked back, Sammy was cuddling Dean like his life depended on it, and Dean mumbled something incoherent and hugged Sammy back.

Jim very pointedly did not say _I told you so_ when John came back into the kitchen, sank into a chair, and let his head fall into his hands. What Jim did do was to get John a cup of coffee and say, "You know, John, I had you in mind as I was working on my sermon this week, but I won't think any less of you if you and Dean skip church tomorrow."

"And do what?" John groaned. "I'm no good at talking. You know that."

"Well, that's between the two of you—the three of you, perhaps I should say," he added, glancing away briefly as if he knew where Mary was. "But you haven't planned out an itinerary for your trip yet. Dean might enjoy getting some input into that."

John nodded slowly.

Jim squeezed his shoulder. "I'll go run off a copy of my sermon notes for you." And he left.

John stared blankly at the coffee cup in front of him until he realized that the steam rising from it was more visible than it should have been. Then he sighed deeply. "I'm not mad, Mar. I just... hell."

_There was no point in hiding_, she whispered. _Sammy can see me._

He looked up in alarm toward where he thought she was sitting.

_I don't know if he's psychic or what, but he asked Dean about me tonight._

He cursed quietly.

Her hand curled over his arm. _Don't be mad at Dean, either._

"I'm not. Poor kid. I—dammit, I wish you were still alive. That boy tries so hard, and I know I shouldn't lean on him so much, but—"

Her thumb rubbed his arm a little. _He loves you more than he can say._

He stifled a sob. "You should have seen him, the grown man, when he came out of my closet. You should have heard Missouri telling me about him, about the choice he'd have to make. It's killing me to see Dean like this, but I... Mary, I just _can't_."

_I know, honey. I could read between the lines. You're right. We can't let it come to that._

He ran his other hand over his mouth shakily as he tried to pull himself together. Then he chuckled. "When's the last time you told me I was right?"

She laughed. _Don't get used to it._

Then Jim returned with his sermon notes, which he handed to John before bidding him good night. John took one look at the title—"Who Is the Righteous Man?"—and had to fight the fleeting urge to pound the tar out of Jim, a fight that was aided by a swift kick to the shin from Mary. Once he realized that the sermon was actually based on the readings for the day, several of which touched on the topic of righteousness,* he settled in to read the thing, and she read over his shoulder. And while it was a good if uncomfortable sermon to read, he concluded that it was probably better not to have to sit through it in public, especially with Dean at his side.

So Jim took Sammy to church while John and Dean stayed home to plan their vacation. They didn't talk about the previous night for most of the morning, but they did exchange a lot more hugs than usual, and Dean seemed to relish the project and the attention. In fact, he did almost all of the planning himself, with John asking leading questions and explaining what was available to do in most of the places they talked about stopping, and he practically glowed every time John said anything that was even remotely like praise. And when John agreed to Dean's timid suggestion that they try to catch a game at Dodger Stadium, Dean grinned bigger than he had since... hell, maybe since before the fire.

Shortly before Jim and Sammy were due to return for lunch, however, Dean looked at the clock and sighed.

"What?" John asked.

"Mom told me what the quest is," Dean confessed quietly.

"Oh." John didn't know what else to say to that.

Dean sighed again. "I get it, I guess. I mean, I see why it's important."

"You just don't want it to be me."

Dean nodded.

John ran a hand through Dean's hair. "Son, I can't ask someone else to take this risk. I had to do that too many times in 'Nam—lost too many good men that way, but back then, I didn't have any choice. I can't do it again."

"But you and Sammy are all I have," Dean pleaded.

John pulled Dean into a tight hug as he cast about for an adequate answer. "I'm no good at bein' noble," he finally quoted with a hint of Upper West Side Manhattan slipping into his accent, "but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

Dean sniffled a little. "Bogie?"

"Yeah. _Casablanca_. It's... it's when Bogie's telling the love of his life to go with another man, her husband, a leader in the Underground. He doesn't want to let her go, but the other guy needs her, and... well, it's—it's all mixed up with what's best for the world, what's the best way to help bring down the Nazis. And Bogie, he has to love Ilsa enough t-to let her go."

Dean held tighter to John and whispered, "I'm not sure I can."

Now it was John's turn to sniffle, not only for his son's heartbreak, but also for his own. He didn't know how readily he would be able to walk away from the Roadhouse without the boys when the time came, how P—Henry could have done it so many years ago. But all he said was, "You don't have to today, Deano. We've got all summer for you to figure it out."

* * *

And they took all summer, the four of them. It took most of the two weeks they had left in Blue Earth for John and Dean to convince Sammy not to talk to Mary in public, but once Dean was finally allowed to leave school, the family settled into the Impala and embarked on the vacation of a lifetime. The trip wasn't wholly unshadowed—it couldn't be, knowing what was coming and with one member of the family being a ghost—but even so, it was as close as John knew they'd ever be able to get to the kind of road trip he'd sometimes dreamed of taking them on when Dean was still a babe in arms.

They spent a week in Yellowstone and saw buffalo and bears and swans, took in the splendor of Morning Glory Pool and fed chipmunks by the Firehole River, and John felt sure he caught at least one glimpse of Mary standing between the boys as they watched Old Faithful erupt, her form a phantom grey against the stark white of the geyser's plume. From there they took their time driving west through the Tetons and south through Idaho and into Utah. They stopped at Arches National Park for a couple of days and hiked some short trails at Bryce Canyon. At Four Corners, Sammy insisted on making Dean chase him through four states at once, and all of them laughed heartily. John had to carry Sammy through Mesa Verde, but Dean found a couple of arrowheads, and that night, Mary appeared long enough to tell them some of the history her family knew that had gotten left out of the official presentation.

How poor Dean managed to get the one donkey at the Grand Canyon with flatulence problems for their trail ride was beyond John, but Sammy couldn't stop laughing over it.

They got to San Diego at the beginning of July and hit the zoo first, but Sammy got so huffy about "aminals in cages"—probably due to some documentary he shouldn't have watched, in John's opinion—that John nixed their planned trip to Sea World in favor of a day to just rest. Then they went up to Camp Pendleton for the Fourth, which gave John a chance to see a few old friends again and remind himself why he hadn't reenlisted. He couldn't have stomached the petty politicking at the best of times; now it seemed even more stupid and pointless than ever. But the boys got all kinds of brags and compliments, and Dean got a chance to show off on the rifle range and try out a couple of firearms that he was just now big enough to use, so it was well worth the trip.

The rest of July and first part of August took them up the Pacific Coast—a week at Disneyland, where the boys befriended a little redheaded girl from Topeka whose name was Darla or something; another week in LA that did include a Dodgers-Pirates game (the Dodgers won), along with a trip to the beach and lots of sightseeing around old Hollywood sites; side trips through Yosemite, Tahoe, and Redwood National Forest, where Sammy decided to design a massive treehouse to build in one of the redwoods and John had to sling him over his shoulder to carry him out of the park; and on up to Portland and Seattle, where Dean claimed he wasn't up to going to see the Space Needle and only later, at Mary's prompting, confessed that extreme heights made him dizzy and afraid he was going to fall. And from there they took the better part of a week to drive back across Washington, Idaho, Montana, and South Dakota to stop for a few days at Bobby's.

Sammy was so adamant about not leaving that Bobby had to help John carry the boys down to the car while they were still asleep so John could be well down the road before Sammy could wake up and pitch the walleyed fit John knew would be coming or even disappear into the junkyard or the woods beyond and keep them tied down for as long as he could. _Kid should have orchestrated the Great Escape_, John thought wryly as he locked and quietly shut the back passenger door. _Woe betide the POW commandant who tried to keep __him__ in the cooler!_

"Now, I _will_ be seeing you in a few days, right?" Bobby asked pointedly as John headed toward the driver's door.

"You have my word as a Marine," John replied seriously. Then he added less seriously, "And you also have my research."

Bobby snorted and slugged his shoulder. "Get out of here before Houdini wakes up." Then he blushed suddenly and whispered, "Ma'am."

John's eyebrow shot up. "You carryin' on with my wife, Singer?"

Bobby turned purple, and John barely heard Mary laugh.

John laughed quietly himself, returned the shoulder slug, and got in the car.

_You were right about this place_, Mary breathed in his ear as they drove away. _Bobby's wonderful, but that's no place for children, especially now that Sammy's old enough to get into things. And the dog..._

"Oh, Cap's a pussycat when it comes to the boys," he whispered back. "Think that dumb Rottweiler thinks they're his pups—almost took my hand off once when I was trying to stop Sammy from petting him."

She snickered.

"I know some folks would say the Roadhouse isn't much better, bar's no place for young boys, and so on. But I just... I don't have anyone else. All the other hunters I know are unstable or not good with kids, or else—like Jim, Bobby, and Rufus—they're single."

_Wish I could trust my family, but... even if they would speak to you, they'd probably raise the boys as hunters first, and that's the last thing I want._

"Yeah. I know. Bill and Ellen, well... they're stable. I know they'll protect the boys, but Ellen wants Jo to go to college. They won't push anything on the boys."

_Good._

They were an hour or two down the road when Dean finally woke, realized where he was, and sat up with a resigned sigh. The next town was still half an hour away, but John had brought snacks, which Dean spotted and dug into without a word.

"Morning," John said, looking in the rearview mirror.

"Mmmn," Dean mumbled flatly around a mouthful of apple, looking out the window.

Well, all right, then. It was going to be one of _those_ days.

John managed to get breakfast at a drive-through in the next town and get past the city limits before the smell of food finally woke Sammy. And as John had expected, Sammy screeched and wailed and bawled and squalled for a good five minutes—until the temperature dropped twenty degrees and Mary appeared, looked sternly over the back seat, and snapped, _SAMMY_.

Wide-eyed, Sammy gulped and tried to disappear into the seat.

_Settle. Down._ And Mary pointedly blinked out.

"Sorry," Sammy replied in a squeaky whisper.

John handed the bag with the boys' breakfast back to Dean, and they all ate in silence. The cold slowly eased as Sammy continued to behave himself.

Then, in a quavering voice, Sammy asked, "Dean, could you read me a story?"

Dean sighed but dug into his backpack and pulled out a book, and the boys quietly entertained themselves for the rest of the drive. They stayed on their best behavior for the two days John stayed with them at the Roadhouse, too, as if they were both afraid of messing up their last hours with him.

All too soon, John declared it was time for him to go. The boys clung to him and cried, and he would have lied if he said he didn't shed a few tears himself. And after repeated promises to come back when he could, he finally tore himself away.

When he got back to Bobby's, all he could do was get drunk and cry himself to sleep in Mary's arms.

* * *

.

* * *

* Given my headcanon that Jim preceded David Gideon as pastor of Sacrament Lutheran, the readings for the third Sunday of Easter in the Lutheran lectionary in Year B (which 1987 was) are Acts 3:11-21, Psalm 4, 1 John 3:1-7, and Luke 24:36-49.


	4. Everybody Comes to Rick's

Chapter 4  
Everybody Comes to Rick's

_John. JOHN. Wake up._

John mumbled something even he couldn't understand as Mary's insistent voice penetrated the fog of alcohol and sleep that he had no intention of fighting his way out of so soon. But the hand that was shaking his shoulder suddenly tightened—and turned to what felt like solid ice. The shock jolted him awake, and he sat up with a loud gasp.

_Finally._ She let him go.

He rubbed his shoulder briskly. "What're you tryin' to do, gimme frostbite?!"

_It's started._

He froze. "What do you mean?"

_Rufus Turner's on the phone. Bobby's taking down the details, but he wanted me to wake you. Sounds like Rufus has a line on the first trial._

John cursed quietly. He had been expecting it to take months of further research to narrow down what omen information lined up with probable deals. Still rubbing his shoulder, he got up and staggered into Bobby's kitchen to get himself a cup of coffee. Bobby was at the table jotting notes, but John wasn't anywhere close to clear-headed enough to read over his shoulder.

"Well, Sleepin' Ugly's finally up," Bobby told Rufus as he looked up and nodded to John.

John didn't know a lot of sign language, but some signs were relatively universal.

Bobby snorted. "Nah, he ain't awake yet, just vertical. I'll fill him in. Thanks, Rufus." And he hung up.

"I hate you," John declared.

"Man up, Princess. I saved you some pancakes."

John found said pancakes on the back burner of the stove on a plate covered by a serving bowl. He brought the plate and the coffee to the table and made a second trip for silverware. As he sat down and dug in, Bobby turned his attention to the atlas he had open on his side of the table.

Once the syrup and caffeine had jumpstarted his brain, John asked, "So what's Rufus got that's so urgent?"

"Guy called him in a panic yesterday, wantin' to know how to hold off demons," Bobby replied, still studying the atlas. "Seems the guy made a deal that comes due in a week, and he's having second thoughts about payin' up."

"One week. Not much time."

"Nope. Rufus'll be callin' Rabbi Bass, see if he can't get hold of at least holy oil, if not one o' those knives the notes talked about. I am tryin' to work out whether you can get to Manning and back in time."

"Manning—Elkins?"

Bobby nodded. "Mary confirmed it. He's got the Colt."

John sighed. "Where's the hunt?"

"Carbondale, IL. Rufus said he'll meet you there."

John did the math in his head. "It's fifteen hours or so to Manning, figure two days from Manning to Carbondale..."

"Yeah, but you gotta argue with Elkins in there, too."

A sudden clatter-bang from the hall closet got both men's attention. They dashed into the hall to find Mary visibly struggling to pick up a duffle that looked suspiciously like one of John's. But John hadn't brought in a bag the night before.

"Honey?" John prompted.

Mary looked up with tears in her eyes. _This was theirs._

"Theirs? They being—"

_You don't remember._ She let the strap fall and faded a bit in defeat. _The night Old Man Woodsen died, we—we had some unexpected visitors._

John felt himself pale. That night had been a horrifying blank ever since it happened. But now that she mentioned it, he had a very vague memory of a voice—a voice strangely like his adult son's—_Sorry, it's just... for a minute there, you reminded me of_—

Bobby pulled the closet door open, and sure enough, there was the sigil again.

John turned back to Mary. "Did you see who it was?"

She shook her head. _Not this time. They just slid the bag through. But last time... well, an angel brought them then, but... I remember, now that I'm dead. They'd put supplies in here, holy oil, couple of angel swords, maybe some other things. They brought it with us when we all went out to the safe house my parents had, out near Clinton Lake._

Swallowing hard, John knelt and opened the bag. In it were in fact an earthen jar, two short silver swords, a knife that matched the description in the notes, a pair of glasses, and a note that read:

_We're sorry, Dad. We love you.  
__Sam_

Mary wept, and John shed more than a few tears himself. Bobby just squeezed his shoulder for a long moment before going to call Rufus.

* * *

"But how did he send it?" John asked a sniffling Missouri two days later. "If I'm changing the future—"

Missouri shook her head. "Ain't changed it enough yet. Boys had two sets o' memories all of a sudden, knew things were startin' to shift. And Sam... poor boy, still fightin' that fever..."

Mary's hand tightened around John's arm.

Missouri chuckled. "Didn't check with Dean first. If he had, he wouldn'ta sent holy oil _and_ the glasses they treated. May not need the angel swords, either, but... then again, you might. Or someone else."

That gave John an idea, but since it wasn't relevant to the conversation at hand, he didn't say anything about it.

Missouri only acknowledged him with a raised eyebrow before turning back to the subject of Sammy—Sam—and his care package. "Anyway, all he could think was that they shoulda sent supplies. So he did, and he prayed they'd get to you in time."

_But what was wrong with him?_ Mary asked.

Missouri shook her head again. "Like Dean said. You don't want to know."

John started to cover Mary's hand with his own but paused when he remembered that she was incorporeal. "Guess the only remedy now is to keep moving forward."

Missouri nodded slowly. "John, you know I ain't no fortune teller. But Sam, his faith in you was... almost absolute. He was afraid they'd failed, he and Dean. He knew Dean could do it, but he couldn't bear to let him try. 'But if anyone else can pull this off,' he thought, 'it's Dad.'"

Mary put her head on John's shoulder.

John took a deep breath and let it out again. "All right, then. I will."

* * *

When John met up with Rufus in Carbondale the next day, Rufus insisted on treating a second pair of glasses so he could serve as John's lookout—John's _corporeal_ lookout, he amended when Mary appeared to object. The guy who'd made the deal was quite shifty about why he'd made the deal and why he was in such a sweat to save his life, so it didn't surprise John when Rufus set defenses with everything that would stop a demon except salt. On the night the deal came due, they rode together in Rufus' truck and staked out the house, and Mary alerted John when she heard the hounds. With her guidance, John and Rufus stalked and cornered one hound, and Rufus kept it busy with salt and iron while John dove underneath it and sliced its belly open with the demon-killing knife, letting the foul black blood wash over him. Rufus caught the corpse before it could collapse on top of John, and that, they thought, was that.

_We're too late for our victim, though_, Mary informed them. _Sounds like the demon sent a full pack... and the idiot tried to run._

Both men sighed.

"All right," Rufus said to John. "You do your thing, and I'll go call this in."

John nodded. "All right."

As Rufus left, Mary smiled regretfully at John. _You looked pretty good, honey._

He smiled wryly back at her and wiped his knife on one of the few clean spots on his shirt. "Don't smell too good right now."

She chuckled.

He sheathed the knife and sighed. "Okay. Here goes. _Kah-nuh-ahm-dahr_."

Even the description Sam had sent in his notes hadn't prepared John for the gust of wind that slammed into his chest, sending him to his knees, or the burst of power that shot up his right arm when he braced himself against the ground, crackling and glowing through his veins before sinking deeper and racing to his heart, then dispersing and letting him breathe again.

When he looked up, he could see Mary hovering over him, eyes wide in fear. "John?!" he clearly heard her gasp.

He wheezed a couple of times as he pushed himself to his feet. "I... I'm okay. Mar... save... save your strength..."

She blinked. "What are you talking about?"

He made the sign for _See_.

She grabbed his arm. "You can see me?"

He nodded. "'N voice's... stronger."

"John, I'm not expending any more energy than I was."

They were still staring at each other in shock when Rufus returned. "C'mon, Winchester. Let's get out of here."

John blinked. "Rufus... c-can you see her?"

"See who?"

John pointed. "Mary."

Rufus looked, put his glasses on and took them off several times, squinted, closed one eye and then the other, held the glasses at arm's length to peer through, and finally shook his head. "Nope."

John let out a ragged breath, swayed, and staggered as he caught himself.

Mary put a hand on his back. "We need to go."

Rufus came over and slung John's arm across his neck. "Come on, Jarhead. Let's move."

John let Rufus take most of his weight as they hurried out to the truck. And he was grateful that Rufus was the one driving, because it took most of the drive back to the motel for him to recover enough to be able to walk into the room under his own power. Mary steered him into the shower and helped him as she could while Rufus took his ruined clothes to burn, and then he collapsed into bed and slept hard for a good twelve hours. He woke more or less refreshed—but he could still see Mary clear as day.

"You all right?" Rufus asked as they left after checking out.

John nodded. "Yeah. I've had worse."

"Where you headed?"

"Colorado. Wasn't time to talk to Elkins on the way out here, but I've got a feeling I'm gonna need that Colt."

Rufus nodded. "All right. Listen, you need anything else, you holler, all right?"

John nodded and shook hands with him. "Appreciate it, Rufus. And thanks for your help on this one."

"_Yasher Koach_,* man." Rufus paused but didn't let go of John's hand. "_Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha'Olam, Dayan HaEmet._"**

John didn't know what to say besides "Amen."

Mary pressed a gentle kiss on Rufus' cheek, much as she must have done a few days earlier to Bobby, and like Bobby, Rufus was briefly flustered by it. John snickered, and Mary winked at him. And with a final round of farewells, Rufus left.

John didn't push straight through to Manning. Nobody's life was at stake except his own, and he wasn't feeling entirely up to snuff. Rather, he enjoyed the road and the scenery (such as it was) and his improved ability to talk with Mary, and he stopped for the night in Salina, KS, and called the Roadhouse to check on the boys. Sammy had developed a bit of a cough, but otherwise the boys seemed to be doing okay, settling in and getting used to the new routine and to Jo.

Elkins, quite predictably, refused at first even to admit that he had the Colt. But John not only told him how Mary knew he had it but also presented the ace—or rather the sword—up his sleeve.

"I don't much care whether we call this a trade or a security," he said, holding the sword out laid flat across his palms. "But I'm willing to leave you one weapon that kills anything in exchange for another."

Elkins frowned. "What is that?"

"An angel's sword."

"Angels don't exist."

"Oh, but they do. I've met a few," John added, though Mary hadn't told him all the details.

"If it kills anything, why do you need the Colt?"

"Range. Bad thing about swords is how close you have to get to use 'em."

Elkins picked up the sword by the hilt and examined it carefully. John couldn't tell whether Elkins was aware of the thrumming of celestial harmony John had felt when he touched the sword, but it didn't really matter in the long run. Elkins finally nodded and handed it back. "Security. As you say, the Colt has the advantage of range. I will want it back."

"Fair enough. I'll make arrangements in case I can't return it in person."

Elkins nodded again and disappeared into his house, returning moments later with a gun case. "There are only five bullets left. After that, it will be useless to you."

John nodded. "Understood."

The two hunters exchanged weapons and shook hands, and John put the Colt in the very bottom of the trunk arsenal and left, intending to return to Sioux Falls by way of the Roadhouse.

That night he stopped in Sterling, CO, to rest. His joints were beginning to ache as if he were coming down with the flu, and Mary insisted that he take care of himself. Sleep did help some, and after breakfast, he felt well enough to continue. But he hadn't yet checked out of his motel room, so he returned to load the car and check out.

He was still double-checking that he hadn't forgotten anything when the closet door rattled.

"Oh, boy," Mary sighed at the same time John groaned, "Here we go again."

But it wasn't an adult version of either of his sons who tumbled through the portal this time. The thin, dark-haired figure was wearing a light blue suit, and John knew who it was even before the man raised a pale, worried face that John hadn't seen in nearly thirty years. That didn't stop him from drawing his gun.

"John?" P—Henry asked warily.

"What. The hell. Are you doing here?" John growled.

Henry raised his hands in surrender. "John, don't you know me?"

Mary looked from father to son in confusion. "Who is this?"

John ignored her. "Oh, I know you. I haven't seen you since you walked out in '58."

Henry's eyes widened. "No—no, son, you don't understand—"

Mary popped into the closet and back out again. "It's the same sigil."

"Enlighten me," John snarled.

Henry swallowed hard. "The night I left, I went to a meeting, at a club on Gaines Street. My final initiation into the Men of Letters. We're a secret society, charged with observing and recording all that man does not understand. All the Winchester men have been members, dating back a thousand years."

"Well, the Campbells never heard of them," Mary noted quietly.

"Go on," John said, not lowering his gun.

Henry sighed. "We were attacked by a demon. Abaddon. One of the elders gave me something to keep safe, but there was no way out. So I used a spell—"

"Blood leads to blood?"

"Th-that's right. But—I mean, if I didn't come back from this time, then how—"

"Long story short? I'm a hunter."

Henry blinked. "A... a hunter? _My son_ a _hunter?!_"

The temperature dropped as Mary snarled, "Damn straight, and one of the best I've ever seen."

Henry flinched backward. "Wait, is that—"

"My wife's ghost," John explained. "Mary, this is my father, Henry Winchester."

"Mary Campbell," she stated flatly. "Of the Lawrence Campbells."

Henry looked at her more closely. "Are... were you Samuel's daughter?"

"I am indeed. But he never said a word about you."

"I'm not surprised. Not to speak ill of your father, but—"

"Don't. You. Dare."

"You don't have a corner on the market for demon attacks," John noted.

Henry ran a hand over his mouth as he seemed to put two and two together. "Look, I... I can fix all this. Just help me get back to Normal, to the Men of Letters. I can go right back to '58, and none of this will have happened."

"Not on your life. I'm in the middle of a major quest, and I cannot let you change anything now."

"John..."

"What part of 'hell, no' don't you understand?"

Before the argument could continue, Mary grabbed John's arm. "John. Something's coming."

The closet door rattled again.

"Oh, no," Henry breathed. "Run!"

But there wasn't time to run. The closet door burst open again, and a statuesque redhead whom John vaguely remembered meeting once strolled through the portal, her baby blue ball gown spattered with blood. "Henry," she said and laughed. "Silly man, you forgot to lock the door."

John cursed inwardly. He wasn't carrying the Colt, the knife, or the remaining angel sword, and the only way to get to them lay past Abaddon. But then the temperature in the room plunged further, and Mary burst into flames and launched herself at the intruder. John began hustling his father toward the door, but he couldn't take his eyes off the ensuing struggle between ghost and demon. Mary gained the upper hand and began wrestling Abaddon out of her host, but it wasn't easy.

"Mary?!" John gasped as the fight reached a brief standstill.

"GO!" Mary cried.

The last thing John saw as Henry pulled him out of the room was Abaddon suddenly billowing out of her host and forcing Mary through the floor.

"John! JOHN!" Henry called, shaking him. "We have to go!"

His heart breaking all over again, John opened the Impala's door, shoved Henry in and slid in after him, and peeled out of the parking lot. They made it perhaps a mile out of Sterling before John pulled over so that Henry could noisily lose what remained of his dinner while John broke down under the weight of his flashback to the night of the fire.

Finally, Henry got back in the car and gently shut the door. "John, I—"

"Save it," John replied gruffly, swiping at his face with his handkerchief. "I knew this was coming. I just... wasn't expecting it so soon." He sighed. "I have to save her."

"Son, she's gone."

"You don't understand. That's the second trial, saving an innocent soul from Hell and delivering it to Heaven." John restarted the engine. "Gotta summon a Reaper, find the back door into Purgatory."

"No, wait, with Abaddon still out there, I need to get back to Normal."

"What part of what I just said did you not understand?"

"Do you _have_ what it takes to summon a Reaper?" When John didn't respond, Henry continued, "I don't know that spell, but I do know the Men of Letters should have everything you need."

"How do you know that?"

"Well, those things can't be much rarer than dragon tears, angel feathers, and the sands of time, which are the ingredients for the spell that brought me here."

"So you want to go back to Normal. To a club that burned to the ground twenty-nine years ago." Henry blanched, but John kept going. "And if by some miracle we find what you're looking for, you're gonna snag your rare ingredients and go back to '58 and wreck everything I'm working for." Henry looked away, and John put the car in gear. "No. We're going to Sioux Falls." And he pulled back onto the road.

A detour to the Roadhouse was out of the question now. If Sammy's escape-artist tendencies were genetic at all, John had a good guess that they'd come from the man sitting in the passenger seat. And he was in neither mood nor fit state to go chasing after his well-meaning but totally ignorant father if Henry figured out that there was a hoodoo shop anywhere near any place where they might stop. There wasn't one closer to Sioux Falls than the one on the Winnebago reservation, and something told John the Ho-Chunk probably wouldn't be stocking dragon tears. So John decided to drive straight through to Bobby's, stopping only for food and gas.

Henry finally broke his silence after the first hour. "So. It's 1987. And you're a widower."

John didn't reply.

"Children?" When John said nothing, Henry sighed. "John, I can't understand why you're so bent on this quest if you won't tell me anything."

John hesitated a moment. "Two boys."

"Are they in Sioux Falls?"

"No."

"Well, then why—"

John snapped on the radio just in time to hear Roger Daltrey's iconic scream on "Won't Get Fooled Again." As intended, it startled Henry into silence. After several minutes of Led Zeppelin, Asia, Kansas, and Pink Floyd, however, John finally relented and turned the volume down during the commercial break. "My sons are safe. I intend to keep 'em that way. Bobby's place is also safe; it's probably the safest place for us to find out what happened to your book club."

"It is not a book club, and it was not a fire."

"Well, the paper called it a fire, so maybe Abaddon started it to cover her tracks. The demon that killed Mary did."

"... What?"

"Why the hell do you think I'm a hunter? You think I got into this for kicks?"

Henry sighed. "Guess I thought too much about the shoot-first-don't-bother-to-ask-questions-later attitude and never asked why anyone would start hunting. Some of the Campbells were among our contacts and had been for generations, but we only worked with the very elite."

"Yeah, well, Mary said her family never heard of you. What does that tell you?"

"Abaddon. But she couldn't have killed everyone—there has to be an elder still living somewhere who can help us."

"Help us with what?"

"At the very least?" Henry pulled a box the size of a pack of cigarettes or cards out of his pocket. "Tell me what to do with this."

"What is that?"

"I have no idea. But it's what Abaddon was after."

Disgusted, John turned the radio back up.

* * *

Henry had no idea what to make of his grown son. None. He supposed he could understand why John seemed so angry, given that he had disappeared without a trace and shown up so suddenly in the midst of John's bereavement—with a demon on his tail, no less. But he couldn't understand how his sweet, loving, brilliant son could have become a _hunter_. Hunters were apes, ignorant and violent. John was a legacy. Why hadn't someone stepped in to teach him the ways of the Letters in Henry's absence?

He refused to entertain the thought that no one had come for John because all of the Letters were dead. If that were the case, his leap in the dark would have been for nothing, since he didn't even know what he'd saved. No, surely someone had made it out of the club that night. He could only hope that this Bobby person would in fact be able to help them find out what had happened. And maybe whoever survived would be able to explain why his own secrecy mattered more than John's welfare.

It wasn't just John's being a hunter that bothered Henry. John's choice of clothing was rough—leather jacket, flannel shirt, blue jeans, work boots. Henry eventually got him to admit that he hadn't gone to college and that he'd been a _mechanic_ before his wife was attacked. His hands were rough and callused, and his build was muscular, more befitting a warrior than a scholar. And he liked rough music, louder and harsher than even the most raucous rock-'n'-roll bands that had been on the radio in '58, and snapped "Driver picks the music" when Henry had dared to try to change the station. Even his car was rough, with its sleek black body and powerful, snarling engine. Maybe it was just the effect of the time travel, but Henry simply couldn't get his head around the extent of John's apparent rejection of the upper middle class life Henry had inherited and tried to pass on.

Quest or no quest, Henry had to go back and make things right. This wasn't the way life was supposed to go.

But of course, going back meant finding the truth in the present, and that meant going through Bobby. And truth be told, Henry was a little relieved when the mileage signs started mentioning Sioux Falls. He had managed to doze on the way to make up somewhat for having jumped from 10 p.m. in one year to 8 a.m. in another, but John, for all his dogged determination to make the trip in one stretch, was starting to look tired and a little peaked. Even if Henry couldn't get away that night, they needed a safe place for John to rest.

He hoped he didn't cringe visibly when said safe place turned out to be a salvage yard.

But there was more to Bobby Singer and his rundown house than met the eye. He greeted Henry with a shot glass full of holy water, presented politely as a drink rather than flung in Henry's face. The living room was full of bookshelves groaning with reference works, some of which Henry recognized and some of which he'd never encountered before. And in a corner of the kitchen, Bobby had a small device that he claimed was a computer (!) connected to some network called CompuServe (!) that allowed him to type in a query regarding the attack on the Letters and expect an answer by the time they finished eating supper.

Once Bobby had typed in that query, however, he turned to John. "Now, _you_ look like hell."

"Singer..." John growled.

"I will look after your dad." Bobby picked up John's bag and shoved it into John's hands. "Hit the shower, Jarhead."

John grumbled something Henry didn't quite catch over the sound of his heart pounding wildly.

"Cain't hurt me with the truth, idjit. At least go change."

John halfway smiled and started to comply.

"Wait," Henry finally managed. "J—y-you—"

John turned back. "Yeah. Corporal. Echo Company, Second Battalion, First Marines."

"Did you—"

"Saw action. Vietnam. Bronze Star, Purple Heart."

"Oh, no. No, no, I should have been there to get you out of the draft somehow."

John looked angrier than he had all day, which was saying something. "I enlisted," he snarled. "It was my choice, and for all the hell I went through, I don't regret making that choice. You know why? Because my country _needed me_. And not even you could have changed that." And he stormed upstairs.

Henry started to follow to apologize, but Bobby caught his arm. "Let him go. He'll cool down, and then you can tell him you're sorry. Y'already got one foot in your mouth. Best not make it two."

Somewhere upstairs, a door slammed.

Henry sighed. "You sound like you know him well."

Bobby shrugged. "Better'n most, I reckon. Jim Murphy knows 'im better, but that's 'cause they served together in 'Nam."

"How long have you known John?"

"Oh, three, three an' a half years. Fire was four years ago come November, so... 'bout that, yeah."

Henry blinked. "Four years? I was under the impression Mary had just died."

"Listen, Henry, there is a hell of a lot that you don't know. So less'n you want a gold medal in jumpin' to conclusions, you wait an' judge after you've heard the whole story."

"But he won't _talk_ to me."

"John don't talk much to anyone, even on a good day. He's just lost her all over again. We can wait'll he's asleep, and I can tell you what happened."

Henry looked at Bobby for a moment to gauge his sincerity and didn't sense any ill will. So he nodded. "I'd appreciate that. Thanks."

John came back down at that point, dressed for bed and looking even more exhausted than he had when he'd left the room. He waved off Henry's apology about the draft comment and didn't contribute much to Bobby's attempt over supper to get Henry caught up on major world events. And after the meal, he waited quietly for Bobby to call up what his computer had found, read the names of the deceased, and enter another query even before Henry could explain that Albert Magnus was an alias. Then John excused himself to the living room with a tall glass of cheap bourbon. Henry watched him go with a sigh and offered to help Bobby with the dishes, but by the time they finished, John was sacked out on the couch and snoring.

Bobby sighed, shut the sliding door into the living room, and came back and picked up the bottle of bourbon. "All I got's cheap rotgut, but you're welcome to it. Might help."

Henry swallowed hard as he considered, then shook his head. "No. Thank you. I'll... I'll be all right."

"Suit yourself. But don't say I didn't warn you."

They sat down at the table, and Bobby spun a tale of woe that even Henry, as a Man of Letters, could scarcely believe was true and left him slumped forward and clutching his head as he tried to make sense of it all—what Mary's ghost had lately confessed quietly to Bobby of the events that led to Samuel's death, the deal she had made, and the fire that had claimed her life. John's fear for his boys and rage over Mary's loss, the twin impulses that had driven him to hunt. The severe efficiency of his hunting, which bespoke his Marine training and both impressed and scared other hunters. And, more important in Bobby's eyes, the number of lives John had single-handedly saved in the relatively short time he'd been hunting. "If those boys o' his take after their daddy as much as I think they do," Bobby concluded, "there's a good chance the three of 'em will be the best hunters in the whole damn world."

Henry didn't know whether he was more heartbroken or proud.

Bobby stood and patted Henry's shoulder. "I'll go see if I can't find somethin' for you to sleep in."

"Thank you," Henry whispered.

Bobby left, and Henry struggled to pull himself together. As tired and shaken as he was, he _had_ to go to Normal, find what remained of the Letters, and return to '58. He simply couldn't let John suffer so much, no matter what the outcome in the wider world might be.

Finally, he pushed himself to his feet and started toward the front door. There were so many cars in the salvage yard that he was sure he could find one to hotwire. True, he didn't have the information from Bobby's latest computer query, but it wouldn't be hard to find the same information in Normal. Better that he disappear now, while Bobby was occupied and John was asleep, than risk their being able to stop him later.

His hand was on the doorknob when an arm shot across the doorway, blocking his escape. He startled back a couple of steps, which gave him the space to realize that it was John, stonefaced and not as drunk as he had seemed, who was cutting him off.

Henry sighed. "John..."

"I'm closing the gates of Hell," John rumbled. "Don't you dare take that away from me."

Henry's mouth fell open as the last puzzle pieces fell into place. He understood far better now. But he couldn't help objecting weakly, "I should have been there for you back then."

John sighed, and his color began to wane. "You can be here for me now, Pops."

Henry never had been the demonstrative type, but he didn't know what else to do but hug his bear of a son and let himself be hugged in return.

"Please," John whispered.

"I'll stay," Henry promised and meant it with all his heart. "As long as you need me, I'll stay."

John's breath hitched. "Thank you."

Henry held John a moment longer, then backed away to arm's length. "Son, you're burning up."

John nodded wearily. "Side effect of the trials."

"Well, then, come on, lie back down. I'm not going anywhere, I swear."

John staggered back to the couch with Henry's help and lay down with a groan. Henry rummaged around the hall closet until he found blankets, covered John with one, and set up a pallet on the floor beside the couch for himself. John was making some kind of noise under his breath as he drifted, but just about the time Bobby started back down the stairs, Henry finally recognized the sound.

John was humming "As Time Goes By."

* * *

.

* * *

* May your strength be firm. (also used idiomatically to mean "Well done")

** Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Judge of Truth. (said in times of bereavement or when confronted with bad news)


	5. Welcome Back to the Fight

Chapter 5  
Welcome Back to the Fight

The bad thing about having Pops back, John mused the next morning, was the fact that he and Bobby could tag-team John on the question of rest. They were wholly unmoved by his plea that he had to get up and get moving because Mary needed rescuing (and damn, it was hard not to count hours and run the conversion and dwell on the fact that every day wasted was four months Downstairs). Rufus and Caleb were running down leads in Normal, Bobby assured him as they practically force-fed him breakfast, and would have an answer on where to go next before John and Pops could even get down there. Then Pops sent John back to bed and threatened to tie him up and sit on him if he didn't obey, and Bobby brought a coil of rope up from the basement before John could finish arguing that he was fine.

He even had to submit to the indignity of having his temperature taken. Fortunately, Bobby had gotten the digital under-tongue kind the last time Sammy had a cold, and even more fortunately, John's fever was still in the low-grade range at only 99.5°. Even so, Pops refused to let John do anything but nap until they knew where they were going.

Rufus called mid-morning to report that the insurance investigation gambit they'd run had hit pay dirt. Larry Ganem, the guy who'd given Pops the box, was still alive and hiding out in Lebanon, KS. But Bill Harvelle could get there twice as fast as John could, so Pops called and talked to Larry to let him know Bill was coming. Pops figured, rightly, that Larry wouldn't explain things over the phone. After he'd hung up from talking with Larry, Pops insisted on eating lunch first, and only then would he agree to leave.

"Are you sure you don't want me to drive?" he asked as he followed John to the Impala.

"_Yes_, Pops, I'm sure," John snapped. "Just get in."

Pops got in and didn't try to talk him out of going 80 wherever he could get away with it.

They met Bill and Larry at a café in downtown Lebanon, where Larry finally explained (in Latin!) that the box held a key to some treasure trove of knowledge that was someplace nearby. But he insisted that Pops throw the key into the place and walk away. "Better that it all be lost," Larry insisted, "than let Abaddon get any of it."

John opened his mouth to object, but Pops put a hand on his arm, shook his head, and made some vague promise about not letting anything fall into the wrong hands. Then the food came, and that ended that part of the conversation.

After Bill had left to take Larry home, however, Pops sighed. "He has a point—but he's wrong about the key."

John raised an eyebrow. "So you're disobeying your elder?"

Pops smiled. "Better to lock Hell, wouldn't you say?"

John grinned.

Bill met them at the coordinates Larry had given them and kept a lookout while John and Pops went inside for a moment. Then John sent Bill on his way with greetings for the boys while Pops took a moment to get over the lack of anybody at the bunker, and then they set about finding the ingredients for the Reaper summoning spell. Once they found what the notes said they needed, Pops insisted that they eat again and sleep—and slipped John a mickey so he couldn't object. So it was the next morning, after breakfast, before they took everything to a park about half a mile from town. Pops carried the summoning paraphernalia to a picnic table while John armed himself with the Colt, the demon-killing knife, and the remaining angel sword.

As they worked together on setting up the spell, John said, "Now, Pops, it's probably gonna take you three days to get up to the right spot in Maine to meet me when I come out."

Pops blinked. "Maine? Won't the Reaper bring you back here?"

"Most likely not. My source said not to plan on it. The directions are in the glove box." John handed him the car keys.

Pops sighed. "All right. I may have to trade in some of the gold that's in the safe to have enough cash."

"Don't." John handed him a fistful of fake credit cards. "Use these. You max out one, use cash and then switch to another."

"How will I know when I've maxed one out?"

"The cashier will tell you it's been declined. And don't worry about what your signature looks like; you'll be gone before they can look for you anyway."

"If you insist. But John—"

"I know. It's just faster this way." And before Pops could object again, John lit the match and performed the summoning.

The Reaper who appeared initially looked like an old man until John mentioned that he was looking for one who went by Tessa. Then it shifted into the form of a lovely young woman with dark hair and serious grey eyes. "Most people don't ask for Reapers by name even when they do summon one," she said. "Why would you ask for me?"

"I'm told you're trustworthy," John replied. "And I need a favor."

"Unless it regards the life or death of a loved one, I'm not sure what kind of favor I can do for you."

"I need a way to get into Purgatory. Alive."

Her eyebrows shot up. "A living human wants to go to the monsters' afterlife?"

"Only the first stop. I'm told there's a back door into Hell there."

She studied him for a moment, then sighed. "I can get you in, but from there you're on your own. I can't risk upsetting the natural order by doing more."

John nodded. "I figured that would be your answer. And I have planned accordingly."

"Are you sure you're fully prepared? Humans were never meant to set foot in Purgatory."

"I've got good intel. I'm sure."

"Very well, then. We should do this immediately."

John nodded again, said goodbye to Pops, and followed Tessa a short way into the woods. "One more thing," he said as they approached what appeared to be their destination. "I'll be bringing a soul out with me. I'd appreciate it if you could see to it that she gets to Heaven in one piece."

She frowned. "I can't deliver souls to any place they weren't meant to go."

"This soul's innocent. She was dragged to Hell by a demon."

"Who is it?"

"Mary Winchester."

She inhaled sharply. "I'd heard something along those lines, but I hadn't put two and two together. Yes, I'll be glad to see that she's out of danger."

"Thanks. If all goes well, we'll be in Clayton, LA, in six days' time."

"Louisiana?"

"May have a favor to do for someone else."

"So you know where the escape hatch is."

"Where it comes out, yeah."

She nodded slowly. "All right, then. I'll check on you in Maine in case the favor isn't required, but you'll probably only see me in Louisiana."

He nodded once. "Fair enough."

With that, she turned to a large tree and studied it for a moment. "This will do. Take my hand."

Swallowing hard, he took her hand. The tree in front of them seemed to melt and swirl in the middle until a blinding light enveloped them for a moment. When the light faded, they were in a completely different forest, where the light was so blear that the entire world seemed almost monochrome.

"This is _Purgatory_?" he asked.

"Unfortunately. Follow the stream to where three trees meet as one. Just beyond them, there's a pile of rocks that blocks the portal to Hell."

"Got it. Thanks, Tessa."

"Thank me in Clayton," she replied with a wry chuckle and vanished.

John took a deep breath and started toward the sound of water he could hear but not see. He found the stream easily enough, but no sooner had he reached it than he was attacked by something that looked like a rugaru. The angel sword made short work of it, but the creature shrieked as it died, and soon John was surrounded by all kinds of monsters and found himself with his back braced against a tree as he fought just to stay on his feet.

And then he became aware of one monster beheading others right and left, cutting a swath toward him. The burly male was wearing a dark blue pea coat and matching cap, like a sailor, and occasionally bared vampire fangs. Some of the other monsters scattered when this cat showed up, but he and John dispatched the others fairly quickly. When the newcomer killed the last attacker, he stopped and lowered his weapon as he studied John.

As soon as John had enough breath, he asked, "You Benny Lafitte?"

The vampire blinked, startled, but he wasn't thrown off for long. He smirked and replied, "Well, maybe I am an' maybe I ain't. What's it to you, human?"

John pushed himself away from the tree with a grunt. "I need a guide. I hear you're reliable."

The vampire's—Benny's—eyebrows shot up, and he began circling John, considering. "Now just where did you hear that?"

"My source doesn't matter. What matters is whether you'll help me."

"You look like a hunter. Why would you trust me?"

"I don't. But you're all I've got."

Benny nodded thoughtfully and came to a stop. "Where you headed?"

"First, I need to find the place where three trees meet as one."

"All right. Ain't nothin' there, but I know where that is. Then?"

"I'm told there's a portal back to Earth. I'm told you know where that is, too, and I'm also told you want a way through it."

"Your source talks too much."

"Listen, Lafitte, under other circumstances, I'd let you rot in here. But if you'll guide me, I'll meet your price."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

Benny studied him for another moment. "Well, then, I suppose I'd like to know who I'm ferryin'."

"John Winchester."

"_The_ John Winchester?!"

Now it was John's turn to blink. "You've heard of me?"

Benny laughed. "Came across some new fish a while back, pack o' ghouls. Man, they was cussin' your name to high heaven."

"Nice to know I'm appreciated."

Benny laughed again and offered his hand. John stifled his qualms and shook it.

"Three trees in one," Benny said then, turning to look upstream. "We're headed thisaway." And he started off.

"Lay on, Macduff," John muttered and followed.

As much as John wanted to get to the Hell portal as fast as possible and cursed every wasted minute, he had to confess to himself that Pops had been right about his needing plenty of rest before he got this far. He hadn't anticipated the intensity of that first attack, and it did set him back on his heels a bit. But Benny's pace wasn't fast enough to be problematic, and he wasn't much of a conversationalist, so John felt somewhat better by the time they caught sight of the conjoined trees. The air was damp and on the cool side of comfortable, too, and that helped a bit with the fever—much more than the sauna of 'Nam would have, for sure.

"Now, just what is it you was lookin' for here?" Benny asked as they approached the trees.

"That pile of rocks over there," John replied, pointing to what looked like a bunch of rocks piled up about ten feet high among another group of trees.

Benny looked. "I see 'em. What of it?"

"Need for you to make sure nobody follows me."

"Follows you? What in tarnation—"

But John ignored him and made his way up to the rock pile. Cautiously he pulled down the big rock at the base, uncovering the Hell portal.

Benny swore. "You ain't goin' in there, are you?"

"Just wait here. I'll be back as soon as I can." And John squeezed through the opening and into Hell.

For one horrible moment, he thought he'd been spit out in Vietnam in '70.

He knew the smell, the feel, the squelch of the dank earth under his hands and feet. But he realized, as he scrambled out of the side tunnel he'd appeared in, that he hadn't seen it from this angle firsthand in '70. He had simply inferred quite a lot from the POW camp his squad had reached an hour too late to save anyone.

This region of Hell looked almost exactly like he had imagined that place to look like. As horrific as the Hanoi Hilton had been, it had at least been above ground. The camp John's squad had tried to liberate had been underground to escape detection, a network of tunnels with individual cells dug into the walls, barely large enough for the men to move around in. There was no ventilation, no sanitation, no room even to stand. This version was still intact, but it seemed ready to flood or collapse if John so much as looked at it wrong; the NVA had done both to the real camp before the Marines could arrive, so all they had been able to do was dig up bodies.

Once John was in the main tunnel, he found the piece of chalk he still had in his pocket and took a moment to mark the beam above the tunnel he'd just come from. Then he made his way through the maze toward a gleam of light that didn't seem to come from the smoking reddish torches on the walls. He had no guarantee that the light he was seeing was indeed from Mary, but it was the best clue he had. He made sure to mark the pillars he passed so he could find his way back quickly. That left him free to ignore the other souls that called out to him for help as he passed the cells; he didn't have time to try to remember which freakishly tortured face belonged with which turn in the tunnel, and he couldn't help anyone else even if he wanted to.

His hunch paid off. The light did turn out to be coming from a cell, and when he looked in the window, even though the soul was collapsed in a bloody heap on the floor, he recognized her immediately.

"Mary?" he whispered.

She stirred. "John?"

"Tomato rice soup," he replied with the password they'd agreed on.

"Kitchen Sink Stew," she sighed with the countersign.

"Can you run?"

"Not yet. The door's... only bolted from that side, but... I need a minute yet."

"All right. I'll hold tight." He drew the Colt and pressed his back against the door.

"How's your dad?" she asked after a moment.

"Swell. He's supposed to meet us."

"Find what he wanted?"

"Yes and no. But he's safe. Got his attitude adjusted while we were at Bobby's."

She chuckled. "With or without buckshot?"

"Without." But John couldn't suppress a smile. "'Course, then he took to knocking me out—'s why it took so long to get here."

"I forgive you."

"Have, um... have they..."

"John. Don't ask."

He sighed. "All right. I won't."

They were silent for a long moment—John couldn't tell whether it was five minutes or five years—and then she kissed the back of his ear through the window. "Okay. I can run."

He reached back with his left hand to start moving the bolt but froze when he heard raised voices somewhere up ahead.

"I don't CARE what standard protocol requires now!" one shrieked. "She attacked me; she made me lose track of the box; she has information I need. _I_ torture her, and no one else!"

"Patience, patience, pet," whined another. "I've not had my chance at a soul like hers in eons. I'll let you watch, but I've got to drink her blood myself."

"I think that one goes by Alastair," Mary whispered in John's ear as the voice began rhapsodizing over what he wanted to do to her. "He's the torture-master."

John swallowed back the bile and slid the bolt back as quietly as he could.

"And I'm telling you she's _mine_," rasped another demon's voice, cutting off the second. "She was always my favorite. I'd have taken her long ago were it not for Lord Lucifer's instructions. Now that she's here—"

"Which she shouldn't be, mate," interrupted a fourth voice. "That deal laid no markers on her soul. You've no claim on her. In fact, _none_ of you lot have any claim on her."

"Crowley," the first and second voices growled in discordant chorus.

John eased the door open behind him, and Mary slipped out as soon as she had enough space to do so.

"I'm aware Your Lownesses all outrank me," returned the fourth, British-sounding voice with no little sarcasm. "But Lilith herself placed me in charge of the Crossroads division, and it's only at her order that I've held my peace about these deals Azazel's been making behind my back. I can't stand by and let you exceed those terms. No matter how the soul came to be here, the fact remains that this wasn't to be her destination. Torturing her on top of that... well, it's bad for business, innit?"

"Your sales figures don't concern me, tailor," the third voice hissed. "You can have all that out with Abaddon and Alastair. I'm taking my pleasure with her now, and you can't stop me."

Mary's trembling hand landed on John's shoulder as footsteps began coming toward them.

"Don't move until I say 'Go,'" John breathed.

She squeezed his shoulder once and held still.

Something came around the next bend in the tunnel, about a hundred yards away. John couldn't really see it, only that it was there, and he thumbed back the Colt's hammer as quietly as he could. The thing—the demon—came just within range before it finally looked up and paused, startled.

Its eyes were solid yellow. And John put a bullet squarely between them.

The gun's report was nearly deafening in the confined space, though the earthen walls dampened the sound to some degree. But there was no way the other demons could have missed hearing either it or the yellow-eyed demon's dying cries. John snatched the knife out of his belt, handed it to Mary, and yelled, "GO!"

Miraculously (or maybe not), the tunnel suddenly got tall enough that John and Mary could run. John kept his eye on their six while Mary held his hand and followed the markings toward the exit. They reached the right spot just as a cloud of demons began to converge on them from each direction, and John pushed Mary through the opening and let her pull him through.

Before he could even bark an order, Benny was already rolling the stone back into place to block the opening. John stowed the Colt and started to offer to help, but Benny's vampire strength sufficed to get the stone placed before it shuddered from the force of the demons slamming into it from the other side. They all watched warily as it shook again and again but did not fall. Finally, after about the fourth attempt, there was a long moment of calm.

Benny pressed his ear against the rocks. "That's it," he announced after a moment. "Ain't no more comin'."

John and Mary hugged each other tightly in relief.

Benny cleared his throat. "Ain't nobody gonn' introduce me?"

John released Mary. "Honey, this is Benny Lafitte. Benny, my wife Mary."

Mary visibly steeled herself and held out a hand. "We appreciate your help, Mr. Lafitte."

But Benny, suddenly every inch the Southern gentleman, doffed his cap and bowed as he took Mary's hand and kissed it gently. "My honor, pleasure, and privilege, ma'am," he replied. "But we better not hang around here too long."

"Understood. Lead the way."

Benny put his hat back on, picked up his obsidian-and-bone weapon, and pointed their new direction. "This way."

"Why was Abaddon there?" John asked Mary as they started off.

Mary sighed. "I fought her all the way down and then some. When she finally overpowered me, she was so incensed that she took her time carving me up. Then several other high-ranking demons showed up for a shouting match, and by the time they were all done with that... well, I suppose you were at Bobby's already or something. Whatever the case was, Henry did something to hide himself from her, and all her leads came up cold. So she came back and tried to make me talk."

"But there was some talk of a deal. You... you never..."

"Not a crossroads deal, but... there... there was one."

John froze. "What?"

Mary started to cry. "Azazel killed you, and then he said he'd bring you back if I gave him permission to enter the house. He wouldn't tell me why. He just s-said... if I didn't interrupt... no one would get hurt."

John's shock was broken only by another onslaught of the monsters that flew through the air as black liquid and took human form when they landed—Leviathan, Benny called them. John still hadn't figured out what to say by the time they fought free and could stop running.

"I don't mean to butt in where I ain't wanted, John," Benny drawled then, "but it seems to me as Miss Mary done overpaid for whatever crime you think she committed with that deal."

John started to object, but then he remembered what had happened to the idiot who hadn't escaped the hellhounds during the first trial, and he remembered the far worse way Mary had died. And even Alastair and Crowley had acknowledged that Mary was innocent and didn't belong in Hell. He sighed and tried to wipe away the fresh tears that were streaking through the grime on Mary's face. "I suppose you're right."

Mary sniffled and tried to smile. "Thank you."

"But Mary, do you have any idea what Azazel had wanted?"

She shook her head. "Whatever he was doing in Sammy's room, he was finished by the time I went back to confront him."

"We'd best keep movin', y'all," Benny prompted, and they followed without another word.

It was a long hike to the portal. Time seemed to be fluid in Purgatory, but John thought he counted at least two nights, which he assumed was time enough for Pops to get to Maine to meet them. And throughout the trek, Benny kept watch while John and Mary rested and helped them keep predators at bay. As much as John still hesitated to bring a vampire back to life, he had to admit that Benny had upheld his end of the bargain.

So after he had performed the spell to embed Mary's soul in his left arm, he handed the knife to Benny. "You're a creature of your word," he said. "So am I."

Benny cut his arm and handed the knife back. "Best make it quick. Somebody's liable to try an' stop you."

John cut his right arm and performed the spell, then ran full tilt for the portal. The trees rustled with attackers as he approached, but he had built up enough speed to dive through before he could be caught.

When he rolled to his feet, Pops was running toward him. John stood still and pulled Pops into a hug when he got close enough.

"Did it work?" Pops asked as he backed away. "Did you find her?"

John nodded. "Got her and the guy we need to take to Louisiana."

"Good, good. I've got a tent right here; it's warded. Come eat something. It's about a mile back to the car."

"Been waiting long?" John asked as he followed Pops to the tent.

"About a day. I didn't know how long you would be, so I hadn't started worrying yet."

John didn't call him on that one, just smiled to himself and let Pops fuss over him and tell him all about his adventures in shopping for clothes and camping gear at Walmart. After they'd eaten, they took down the camp and hiked back to the car, then switched off driving to get to Clayton as quick as possible.

Both Benny and Dean's notes had given very clear directions on where to find Benny's grave, and between them, John and Pops made short work of uncovering the bones. John's arm was glowing painfully now that Benny's soul sensed its proximity to his remains, so it was something of a relief to perform the spell to reunite soul and body. It still went against his hunter instincts to unleash a monster he'd thought was extinct, but he didn't have a lot of choice.

Once Benny was vertical but while John was still catching his breath, Pops introduced himself to Benny and said, "I have a couple of messages for you from an anonymous friend."

Benny looked puzzled. "Oh?"

"Firstly, if you find yourself in need of a nest, look in Montana for a vampire named Lenore. She and her nest consume only animal blood; they should be able to support you."

Benny looked even more puzzled. "Now, why in the hell should I need a nest?"

"Well, that's the second message. The Old Man turned Andrea."

John hadn't thought a vampire could pale, but Benny certainly did. "No," he breathed, his eyes filled with grief. "Oh, no, no, no."

Pops actually looked compassionate. "Our source said maybe Lenore could help you convince Andrea to leave feeding on humans."

Benny drew a ragged breath and nodded. "I... I hear you. I'll s-see if I can find the lady. Thank you." Then he turned to John and offered his hand. "John. Don't suppose I'll be seein' you."

"Not if all goes well," John replied. "You just keep your head down—oh, and steer clear of Manning, CO. There's a vampire expert there."

"Elkins?"

"Elkins."

Benny nodded. "Heard of him. Thanks." And with a final farewell nod, he left.

Once he was out of human earshot, John turned to Pops and murmured, "You read those papers?"

"Well, you didn't have any books in the car," Pops replied with an innocent look that told John exactly where both Sammy and Dean had gotten theirs.

John didn't have time to be either annoyed or amused, however, because Tessa appeared. "You are indeed a man of your word, John," she said. "I have come to keep mine."

John nodded and released Mary, who flowed skyward out of his arm in a blue-white glowing cloud. Tessa vanished, and the cloud's progress sped up until it evidently reached the threshold of Heaven, at which point it flashed as if in farewell and disappeared.

Pops rubbed John's arm gently. "Better finish it, son."

John pulled himself together, nodded, and recited the Enochian incantation. He was better prepared for the impact of the power that slammed into him this time, but it still drove him to his knees and burned its way up his left arm. But as badly as it left him reeling, he couldn't help feeling relieved as Pops hauled him to his feet and bundled him into the car. He hated losing Mary yet again—but at least this time he knew she was safe.


	6. Round Up the Usual Suspects

Chapter 6  
Round Up the Usual Suspects

_Sam—tall, lanky, long-haired Sam, pale-faced and hollow-eyed—stumbled back a couple of steps and watched the sigil fade. He'd put a few drops of blood on the bag's handle and had been careful to slide the bag through so the jar of holy oil wouldn't break. He could only hope that it would land in the right time._

_ "__What the hell do you think you're doing?" Here came Dean._

_Sam shrugged. "Dad didn't have any holy oil."_

_ "__Dammit, keeping the portal open for me to get back just about killed you."_

_ "__I was only sending a bag, Dean."_

_ "_Bed._"_

_Sam sighed and let Dean manhandle him into his bedroom—the first time in thirty-one years they'd both been alive and together and had their own bedrooms for more than a week—and back into bed. Bed was soft; Dean had insisted on getting him one of those memory-foam mattresses, swore it would make him feel better._

_Sam wasn't sure anything would make him feel better. Not now._

_ "__Shoulda let me finish," he said quietly as Dean tucked him in._

_ "__Sammy." Still 'Sammy' after all these years. And yeah, they infuriated each other, but Sam still loved his Dean more than life itself._

_ "'__M not gonna get better, dude. I can still finish the trial; 's not too late."_

_ "__You know why I can't let you do that."_

_ "__But Dean..."_

_ "__Don't you 'But Dean' me!" Dean tried to look stern, but all he managed was anguished. "It's in Dad's hands now."_

_Sam grabbed hold of Dean's arm. "'S not fair. Shouldn't hafta choose between me an' Dad."_

_ "__Shut up." But Dean couldn't keep his voice from breaking._

_ "__Dean..."_

_ "__Look, I meant what I said. There is nothing I would put in front of you. Not even Dad."_

_ "__He'll make it, Dean. He'll do it."_

_ "__I know." And that knowledge was eating Dean alive._

_ "__I wonder if... if we'll remember when it happens. If we'll know."_

_ "__I hope not," Dean whispered._

"John. _John._ Wake up, son."

John woke with a start to find himself in the same bedroom in the bunker as he'd seen in his dream, but instead of Dean sitting beside him, it was Pops shaking him awake. He had a vague memory of stumbling in early that morning (or was it?), but he didn't remember falling asleep.

But he didn't have time to dwell on it, because the next words out of Pops' mouth were, "How old did you say your boys are?"

"Um." John's voice was rough with sleep, and his mind wasn't too clear yet, but he thought he remembered the right answer. "Eight an' four?"

"Come on. There's a story coming up on the news you need to see."

"C'n I have some coffee?" John asked as Pops dragged him to his feet.

"Already waiting, Sport. C'mon."

John felt like death warmed over, to be honest. The first trial had done a number on him, but it hadn't been this bad. His fever had risen, he thought, and all he really wanted to do was sleep. But the newscast got his pulse going faster than the caffeine did when they went to a commercial break with, "Coming up next: A sudden outbreak of a mysterious illness is affecting four-year-olds nationwide. Could your child be at risk? Stay tuned."

John swore.

Pops nodded. "That's why I woke you."

"Thanks."

John guzzled his coffee during the break and was on the edge of his seat while the reporter chronicled the eerily similar cases of Max Miller, Jake Talley, and Ava Wilson, none of whom had anything in common except a cough that had started producing blood and a fever that had spiked—all at exactly the same time. Doctors were baffled by the outbreak. "There's no common point of contact or any clear vector for this disease," one expert said. "A number of the children were exposed to smoke from a house fire when they were six months old, but even there, there's no clear correlation..."

John flung himself out of the room and to the nearest telephone.

Ellen picked up on the first ring. "Oh, John, thank _God_," she nearly sobbed when he identified himself. "Bill didn't have a number where we could reach you."

"I just saw the news about the kids coughing up blood."

"Sammy's one of them. They're calling him Patient Zero, in fact, as if he started the whole thing. They had to Lifeflight him to Omaha last night."

"Omaha, Omaha—Children's Hospital?"

"Right. Bill's there with Dean, and Jim and Bobby are on their way, if they're not already there. Where are you?"

"Lebanon still. Again." Dammit, he needed more coffee.

And Ellen could tell. "John, are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, just... second trial took a lot out of me. Look, I'll get Pops and get out there as quick as we can."

"Okay. Want me to call and let them know you're coming?"

"That'd be good, thanks."

"Four hours?"

"Make it five, 'case we have to stop."

"Good thinking. I'm so sorry."

"Thanks, Ellen. We'll be in touch." And John hung up.

When he got back to the main lobby, he spotted Pops standing in the middle of the library, looking lost. "Healing texts," Pops thought aloud as John approached. "Surely there's a section of healing texts in here somewhere." He went to a random shelf and picked out a book to start flipping through.

John mentally scanned through the list of allies that the boys had sent back with the trial description and hit on a plan before Pops could realize he was looking at the wrong book. Then John went to the card catalogue, found the card he needed, and headed toward a different shelf.

Pops looked up, confused. "Aren't those the _summoning_ texts?"

"Yup. Do me a favor? Call Directory Assistance and find out if there's a Hindu temple in Omaha."

"Why?"

"Just do it, Pops." John found the book he wanted and brought it to the table, then went to find a pen and some paper.

By the time he got back, Pops was finishing up on the phone. "No temple," he reported, "but I did find a guru who gave me coordinates for a good place to perform a summoning."

"Awesome." John found the summoning he needed, copied it down, and handed it to Pops. "Here's what we need."

Pops looked even more confused but nodded. "I should be able to find all of this in the lab. But why—"

"Pops. Trust me."

"All right. Go eat while I gather everything."

John's stomach rebelled at the thought of food, but he did go to the kitchen to fill a travel mug with coffee. He forced himself to eat a banana, too, just so he could say he had.

He was just throwing the peel away when Pops came in with a satchel. "All right, we're set. Let's go."

John nodded and grabbed his travel mug. "Hospital first."

"Of course. Best to know what we're dealing with first-hand."

John drove as far as he could, but he barely made it to the Platte River before he had to pull over and trade places with Pops.

Visiting hours were long since over by the time they arrived at the hospital, but when Bill came down to confirm that John was Sammy's father and that Henry was kin, the staff let them in to see Sammy. Dean was sitting in the ICU waiting room with a nurse and trying to watch TV when Bill led them that far, but he gasped when he saw John and ran to hug him.

"Dad!" The exclamation was just shy of a sob. "You're here!"

"Came as soon as I could, son," John replied, returning the hug.

Dean held on for a moment, then backed away. "Dad, are you okay?"

"Be a lot better when I know what's going on here. Tell me what happened."

"You'd been gone ten days or so when Sammy started coughing in the middle of the night. We all thought it was just a cold at first, but it didn't get better. So Ellen took him to the doctor, and he said he'd coughed up a little blood. The doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong, so he just gave Sammy some cough medicine. And th-then last night... all of a sudden, it got worse. A lot worse. He couldn't stop coughing, and it was bloody, and he had a real bad fever, and... and they had to bring him here, and they still don't know what's wrong."

Pops stepped forward. "What time did the change occur?"

Dean looked from Pops to John in confusion.

"It's okay, Dean," John said quietly, so the nurse couldn't quite overhear. "This is your Grandpa Henry. He's cool."

Dean sighed and looked away as he thought. "I... I don't remember. Late, like maybe midnight."

John's sense of time was still skewed, but Pops looked grave enough that John suspected that was about the time he completed the second trial. He sighed. "Okay. Take me to him."

The nurse stood at that point. "Mr. Winchester, if you yourself are ill—"

"Chemo," John and Dean interrupted at the same time.

"It's an experimental treatment I'm undergoing at MD Anderson," John continued. "I just got the second round, but I had to come check on my son. There's no risk of contagion on my part."

The nurse sighed. "All right, but we can't expose you to any infectious diseases, either."

"Is there evidence that Sammy's contagious?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then let me see my son."

Pops cleared his throat. "Ma'am, I'm not only the boys' relative; I also work for the CDC. Perhaps my division would be able to locate a treatment better if I could send a first-hand report."

The nurse sighed. "All right. This way."

Dean grabbed John's hand and held it all the way into the ICU unit where Sammy was staying. Poor Sammy was barely visible amid the cooling blankets and wires and tubes, but he didn't look much better than John felt. He snuffled miserably and coughed once as John gently brushed his hair back from his forehead, and then a major coughing fit hit. John clamped a tissue over Sammy's mouth to catch any blood that might go flying, tried not to grimace when something hot and sticky did hit the tissue, and rubbed Sammy's back until the fit passed. By the end of it, Dean had plastered himself to John's side.

Sammy's eyes fluttered open as John helped him to lie back again. "Dad?" he whispered hoarsely.

"I'm here, kiddo," John whispered back. "I'll find a way to fix this, I swear."

Sammy smiled. "Knew you'd come. Love you." And he was asleep again—and John had a moment of bizarre double vision, with the image before him overlaid by the image of grown-up Sam falling asleep in the bunker. The two images even coughed at the same time.

But why was Sammy suffering now when John was the one doing the trials?

"Dad?" Dean prompted. "You okay?"

John nodded, folded up the bloody tissue, and tucked it into his pocket. "I'll be all right. Look, Pops and I need to go do something, make some calls, but we'll be back soon."

"How soon?"

"Couple of hours, maybe. Before daylight, for sure. I'm not leaving town until Sammy's better."

Dean relaxed a little. "Okay."

John gave Dean another hug and rubbed Sammy's shoulder once more, and then he tore himself away and left with Pops.

"I hope you know what you're doing, John," Pops said quietly as they rode the elevator back down to the lobby.

"I do," John replied. "I just hope it works. Nice save on the CDC cover, by the way."

"I do—did—have credentials from most of the major agencies. Never asked whether they were real or not. I have no idea where they are, though, and even if I did, they'd be woefully out of date."

"Hell, if you need 'em, Bobby can get you fixed up."

"Let's hope I don't."

Pops drove to the coordinates the guru had given him, which turned out to be a vacant lot on the west side of town. Then he hung back to watch the car while John performed the summoning. John thus couldn't see Pops' reaction when the petite dark-skinned goddess in the red sari appeared on the far side of the summoning bowl.

"What?" she asked flatly, arms crossed.

"Sorry to disturb you, Kali-Ma," John answered. "I'm looking for Loki, and I hear you know him better than most."

Kali raised one eyebrow. "And why do you seek Loki?"

"My son is ill. I understand he can help me find a cure."

She raised her other eyebrow and began circling him, studying him from head to toe. He stood his ground and pretended not to be aware of how her gaze penetrated to his very soul. After she'd made one complete circuit, she walked up to him, studied his face, and then suddenly swiped nails like tiger claws across his cheek. It drew blood, but he didn't flinch.

She looked at the blood on her fingers, then smiled at him. "Because you hate demons as much as I do, I will do this for you. Wait." And she vanished.

He swayed briefly, surprised at the effort it had taken to withstand her scrutiny. But by the time he'd taken a deep breath and let it out again, she had returned, her two left hands holding the ear and arm of a white male with slicked-back brown hair and hazel eyes. Said male, who was presumably Loki, was attempting unsuccessfully to twist out of her grasp.

"Kali, what the hells—OW!" Loki yelped as she swiped at him with one left hand the way she'd swiped at John. "What was that for?!"

She didn't answer, simply pressed the blood-coated fingertips of her left and right hands together. There was a flash, and John got a brief glimpse of chains made of light binding him to her captive, whom she then released.

"_What_ was that for?" Loki repeated, exasperated.

"He needs your help, Loki," she stated mildly. "I simply made sure you would give it." She licked the blood off her right index finger as if it were chocolate, and John felt the gashes in his cheek close and disappear. Then she stepped up to him again. "I don't know how much any blessing I can give will help you now, but you have it for whatever it is worth. The rest is in your hands."

John nodded slowly. "Thank you, Kali."

She nodded back and left.

Loki huffed. "_You_ are looney tunes, you know that? Not only do you look to a Trickster for help, but you get a guy's ex involved—"

"Gabriel," John interrupted.

Loki froze with his mouth open, then shut it.

"Never mind how I know who you are. I'm pretty sure you know who I am. I started trying to close the gates of Hell in order to save my sons. I was fine with giving my life for them. But now these trials are killing both me and my son, along with a lot of other kids his age, and I need to know how to fix that."

Loki—Gabriel—chuckled nervously. "That, my friend, is way above my pay grade. If you think I'm getting involved, think again. I'm l—" He turned as if to disappear, but the light chains appeared again and pulled him back.

John grabbed Gabriel by the scruff of the neck. "You're not going anywhere except with me. Move it."

Gabriel spluttered and squirmed but had no choice but to let John drag him to the car and all but throw him into the back seat.

"That's who you were after?" Pops asked, surprised, as John slammed the back door shut.

"Pops, just drive," John groaned and jogged around to the passenger side.

Gabriel was silent all the way back to the hospital and into Sammy's room, where Pops did a quick song and dance to convince the staff that Gabriel was one of his CDC coworkers. But barely had John sat back down at Sammy's bedside than Sammy had another coughing fit, worse than before. When it was over, John felt as exhausted as Sammy looked.

He turned to Gabriel, whose sullen expression had faded into something closer to worry. "I don't even know what's wrong with him," he whispered, unable to keep a pleading note out of his voice. "The trials are causing it, but..."

Gabriel sighed. "It's probably the demon blood."

John blinked several times. "_Demon_ blood?"

Gabriel nodded. "See, Lucifer had this plan. Long story short, he was looking for a special child who would grow up to release him from Hell and then consent to be his vessel."

"Vessel? You mean—"

"Yeah, possession. Angels are limited to certain bloodlines and have to get consent. You should—well, no, you don't remember, but you're Michael's vessel in your generation. Dean is Mike's vessel in his generation, and Sam, unfortunately, is supposed to be Lucifer's, since he's your second son. But Luci couldn't _say_ that to Azazel, so he left his instructions vague. And Azazel made a bunch of deals without telling anyone that the fine print allowed him to feed his blood to a deal-victim's six-month-old child, so the child's body would produce trace amounts of demon blood and presumably be primed to house Luci when the time came."

John ran a hand over his face. "And one of the deals was with Mary. That's why he was in our house."

"Bingo."

"So now all those children are... are coughing up the demon blood?"

"That's my guess."

John carded his fingers through Sammy's hair and thought back to the vision of his grown sons, to Missouri sobbing and refusing to tell him why, and wondered whether the potential possession by Lucifer had any part to play in the many things she'd said he didn't want to know. Then he looked up at Gabriel again. "If... if I finish this... would Sammy be safe?"

Gabriel pursed his lips. "Hard to tell. Shutting down the Pit would derail the plan as it stands now. There is a second method of opening the Cage that Lucifer may or may not know exists. I do know that he doesn't know exactly what it is. I don't know if Mike's so sold on the destiny gag that he'd decide to open the Cage himself, or if any of my other idiot brothers would try to manipulate the boys into doing it for them."

"But if we can cure Sammy of the demon blood..."

"Then Luci would be without a permanent vessel. He might still try to take Sam, but Sam wouldn't survive it. And if there's one thing I know about my brother, it's that he hates being denied a chew toy that would last him a while."

John took a deep breath and let it out again. "Do you know of a cure?"

Gabriel held up his hands. "Hey, whoa. I'm a messenger, not a doctor, and I'm kind of in Witness Protection these days. And I'm guessing we really don't want Mike or Rapha involved right now."

Sammy coughed and shifted, which caused the IV drip to rattle and catch John's eye. And suddenly John had a plan.

He went to the door and called softly for Pops, who was standing in the hall. "Where's Bill?"

"Out in the waiting room with Dean. You need him?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Pops nodded, left, and returned with Bill. "You got something?" Bill asked.

"Pretty sure. But I need Jim."

Bill understood that completely the wrong way and paled. "John, don't you dare—"

"Not for last rites! _I _need him!"

"Why?"

"Dammit, Harvelle, just _get him here!_"

Bill threw up his hands in surrender and headed to the nurses' station.

Gabriel frowned. "What are you thinking?"

But Pops, having read all of the notes about the trials, was two steps ahead of Gabriel. "You're sure that will work for this?"

John shrugged. "What else have we got? Besides, I'll need to anyway for the third trial."

"But if Sammy's not possessed..."

"No, no, not the whole shebang."

"John, be careful. Josie was there for the first attempt in '57, the one that backfired so horribly. She said it scared her spitless, and she could have handled almost anything. Well, except Abaddon."

John shook his head. "It won't come to that. Not this way. Not with Sammy."

Gabriel had caught on and nodded. "I think you're right. And like you said, what else have we got?"

Pops looked from John to Gabriel and back and sighed. "Well. Guess I know what the next entry in my journal will be. And I guess I'll have to stick around to see how it comes out."

John smiled. "Thanks, Pops." And he went back to sit with Sammy until Jim arrived.

Dean came to the door several minutes later. "Dad? Pastor Jim's here."

John stood with a groan. "All right, son. Thanks. Why don't you watch Sammy for me while I go talk with Pastor Jim?"

"'Kay." Dean came over to take the chair John had just vacated.

John squeezed Dean's shoulder and went out to the waiting room, where Jim was standing talking with Bill.

"John," Jim said as John walked up. "Bill said it was urgent. What's going on?"

"We'd better do this in the chapel," John replied.

Jim blinked. "The chapel? Why?"

"I've got a confession to make."

Jim's eyes widened, and he grabbed John's arm. "All right, then. Come on."

"Be right back," John told Bill as Jim hustled him to the elevator.

On the way down to the chapel, Jim sighed. "John, are you sure now's the time?"

"I'm not starting the third trial yet," John explained. "If I need to, I'll get you to hear my confession again when it is time. But if repeated doses of purified blood can cure a full-fledged demon, one dose ought to cure a human kid infected with demon blood, right?"

Jim inclined his head in understanding. "That would be logical, yes."

"Assuming this works, we can put the word out, get teams of hunters to treat the rest of the kids before I start the last trial."

"What I don't understand is why more children than just Sammy were affected."

"Long story."

"Those notes made it sound like only the person who had attempted the trials was affected this way."

John sighed. "Can't be sure, but... my guess is, he was the only one left."

"But—but there are dozens, maybe hundreds. How could they all have died?"

"Like Missouri said. We don't want to know."

Jim sighed and let the question drop. "Now, remind me. Have you been baptized?"

"As a baby, yeah, I think so. Sort of remember going through Confirmation."

"All right. Confession and Absolution it is, then."

They reached the chapel then and, finding it empty, sat down on the front two pews, with Jim turned around to face John. Jim flipped through his prayer book to find what he needed.

"Kinda... don't know where to start," John admitted.

"That's what the liturgy is for," Jim replied with a kind smile and turned the book around so John could read.

"Please hear my confession," John began reading, "and pronounce forgiveness in order to fulfill God's will. I, a poor sinner, plead guilty before God of all sins. I have lived as if God did not matter and as if I mattered most. My Lord's name I have not honored as I should; my worship and prayers have faltered." This was getting uncomfortably close to home, but he pressed on, even with his voice wavering a little, because Sammy needed him to. "I have not let His love have its way with me, and so my love for others has failed. There are those whom I have hurt, and those whom I have failed to help." Then his voice gave out on him completely, and he broke down and wept.

Jim rubbed his shoulder. "Keep going, John. No one's going to hear this except God and me. Get it all out."

And John did. Every time he'd failed Mary and the boys, every time he'd messed up a hunt or been too slow to respond, every time he hadn't questioned orders in 'Nam and should have, every time he had questioned orders and shouldn't have, every time he'd cheated on a test or treated a girl badly, all the years he'd hated Pops for what he now knew were unjust reasons, all of it came tumbling out in a rush of words he wasn't even sure made sense. Finally, after he'd faltered to a stop, he followed Jim's finger and read, "I am s-sorry for all of this and ask for grace. I w-want to do better."

Jim didn't even look at the book for the next part. Instead, he looked John in the eye as he recited, "God be merciful to you and strengthen your faith. Do you believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness?"

John stifled another sob and nodded.

"In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son"—here Jim made the sign of the cross over John—"and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace."

"Amen," John echoed hoarsely and nearly collapsed in exhaustion.

Jim caught him. "Hey, hey, hey. Let's get you to a bed."

John shook his head. "Nuh-uh. No time. Sammy needs me."

Muttering prayers under his breath, Jim hauled John to his feet and back to the elevator. John was steady enough to stand and walk on his own by the time they got back to ICU, but Jim accompanied John to Sammy's room, probably to make sure John didn't fall over. Pops took their arrival as his cue to wheedle an empty syringe out of the nurses, and Jim followed Gabriel's lead in insisting that the treatment they were attempting was classified and barring the nurses from following John and Pops into Sammy's room.

"Okay, Dean," John sighed quietly once they were inside. "Is there a barf bucket or something handy?"

Dean looked around and found an emesis basin, which he jumped up to grab and bring back to the bed while John sat down.

"Good. Dunno how this will work, so we may need that. Stand by."

"Yes, sir," Dean said seriously.

"Pops?"

Pops handed John the syringe and reminded him of how much to use. John nodded, rolled up his left sleeve, and drew the right amount from a vein. Then he pulled Sammy's cooling blanket down enough to find a vein in the boy's neck.

"I'm sorry if this hurts, Sammy," he whispered, even though Sammy seemed to be asleep. Then, as gently as he could, he slid the needle into the vein and injected the blood.

Nothing happened for several seconds, during which time Pops took the syringe from John and dropped it in the sharps disposal. But then Sammy's heart rate sped up, and he started breathing harder, as if he were fighting nausea. Dean pushed the emesis basin under Sammy's chin just before Sammy sat bolt upright and vomited several times, bringing up blood each time but the last. But as the heaves subsided and Sammy relaxed backward against John's hand and arm, all of his numbers improved drastically—heart rate, respiration, even temperature. His breathing eased, and the fine sweat of a broken fever appeared on his forehead as his color returned to normal.

"I think that did it," Pops breathed. "You were right, John."

Sammy took a deep breath, let it out again, and opened his eyes. Then he gasped. "Dad!"

"Hey, Champ," John replied with a smile. "Feeling better?"

"I feel great!"

John didn't give a damn at that moment about wires or tubes or anything. He just gathered his baby boy into a tight hug. "Thank God," he breathed. "Thank _God._"

Sammy hummed happily and returned the hug for a moment. Then he pushed at John's chest as if wanting distance. "Dad, you're _hot_. Are you okay?"

No, he wasn't okay, but he wasn't going to say so. He just let Sammy go and braced himself on the side rail of the bed. "Just... just need a moment..."

"Dad?" both boys asked.

"Sammy's okay. That's... tha's wha'..." He was vaguely aware that he was slipping out of the chair, but he blacked out completely before he could hit the ground.


	7. Here's Looking at You, Kid

Chapter 7  
Here's Looking at You, Kid

"DAD!"

Henry was amazed at how that stereo scream threw the entire ICU ward into action. He'd been too busy trying to catch John to cry out himself, but almost before he knew what was happening, the nurses were bundling John onto a gurney and wheeling him out of the room at a run. Dean ripped the monitor leads and IV drip away from Sammy, who didn't so much as yelp. Then Henry scooped Sammy up and grabbed Dean's hand, and they were running off after the gurney with Gabriel, Bill, and Jim hard on their heels. There were some kind of vehicles waiting at the emergency entrance—they didn't look like the ambulances Henry was used to, but that might have been what they were—and the staff loaded John into one and everyone else into the other. Methodist Hospital was right around the corner, so it was only a minute or so later that they were rushing John into that emergency room and making the rest of the group wait in the waiting room. Henry filled out as much of the paperwork as he could, though there was some medical history that Jim had to fill in for him and some that they had to make up.

"Is Dad gonna be okay?" Sammy asked Henry quietly in the first calm moment.

Henry sighed. "I don't know. I hope so."

Sammy snuggled against his shoulder. "Where's Mom?"

"Your mother's in Heaven."

Sammy huffed. "Nooo, she's—"

"What he means..." Dean tried to interrupt.

Henry held up a hand and lowered his voice even further. "I know what he means. I saw her that way, too. But I also saw her go to Heaven, with my own eyes. Your dad and I watched to make sure she got there okay."

Dean blinked. "When?"

Henry glanced at the clock and saw that it was after 4 a.m. "Guess it's morning, so night before last."

Dean swallowed hard and blinked back tears. "So sh-sh-she's... really gone?"

Henry put a hand on Dean's cheek. "She's _safe_."

Dean let a tear escape but scrubbed it away, and Sammy buried his face in Henry's shoulder and cried quietly.

They were still sniffling when a doctor came out to say that the Children's Hospital had called and asked him to examine Sammy so he could officially be released. Henry and Dean went back with Sammy, and Dean answered most of the doctor's questions while Sammy patiently let himself be poked and prodded.

Then, when the doctor stepped out for a moment, Sammy finally asked Henry, "Wait, who are you?"

"I'm your Grandpa Henry," Henry replied quietly, "your dad's dad, but that's a secret. Your dad wants me to tell people I'm your uncle."

Sammy frowned. "You don't look like a grandpa."

"That's why it's a secret."

"But why don't you look like a grandpa?"

"That, my dear Sammy, is a very long story that I will have to tell you later."

"Is it a good story?"

"Well, I don't know how it ends yet."

Sammy pondered that for a moment. "Yeah. The good stories have a happy ending."

"Well, some do. The thing is, the best stories don't really end. One part of it comes to an end, but there's always more that comes after that part."

"Like King Arthur?" Dean volunteered.

"Sure, like King Arthur. There are lots of stories about him. But even when you get to the very end, where Arthur goes off to Avalon, the story doesn't truly end."

"'Cause Arthur's supposed to come back someday."

"That's right."

Sammy gasped. "Are _we_ in a King Arthur story?"

Henry shrugged. "I don't know. We could be."

And from there the boys distracted themselves with talking about what their Arthurian romance would be about until the doctor returned and pronounced Sammy in perfect health. He also reported that John was in critical but stable condition and was going to be admitted to ICU; they had been able to get his fever down below 105°, but it was a constant fight to keep it there, and they weren't sure how soon he'd regain consciousness. One person was allowed to stay with John, but the doctor recommended that everyone else go try to get some sleep.

"Gabriel stays," Henry declared. "It's rather complicated"—he wasn't sure he understood himself—"and also classified, but Gabriel is required to stay with John at all times."

The doctor nodded. "All right. I'll come with you to explain the situation to the others."

Once the others were apprised of the situation and they had been allowed back briefly to see John in ICU and let the boys tell him good night, Gabriel settled in to watch, and Henry once again took charge of the boys and followed Jim and Bill back to their cars and thence back to the motel where the hunters were staying. When it had looked like Sammy would be in the hospital a while, Bobby and Bill had agreed to get adjoining rooms so that John, Henry, and Dean could share one while the other hunters shared the other; both rooms were already warded. So while the boys got ready for bed, Henry joined Jim and Bill in briefing Bobby, who was still awake, and then got ready for bed himself. The hunters promised to take charge of everything and to let him know how things were progressing. And that was good, because Henry was finally beginning to register the fact that he'd been on the road almost non-stop for ten days.

After getting cleaned up, he came out of the bathroom to find the boys asleep in one bed, curled up together like their lives depended on it. But as much as his heart broke anew over how his family had suffered in his unintended absence, what he had seen these last ten days had convinced him that John was right. Not only did Henry need to let John finish his quest, but he also needed to be present here and now, not just for John, but for Dean and Sammy as well. So resolved, he switched out the lights and lay down to try to get some sleep himself, hoping that the situation would improve shortly.

It didn't.

A week passed, in which the hunter network took charge of treating the demon-blood-afflicted children under the falsified aegis of the CDC. By the end of that time, all but one had received treatment with parental permission; the remaining child, Max Miller, was treated by hunters who slipped into the hospital after hours and then reported his parents to Child Protective Services for abuse. But that was the extent of the good news. John's condition remained essentially unchanged, and he hadn't regained consciousness. While the group spent as much time at the hospital as they could, there was little for the boys to do in the waiting room besides worry, so Henry took the doctors' advice and took the boys out to the various child-friendly landmarks around town. None of them could fully enjoy any of it, but they did get to know each other better. And it did beat waiting around helplessly.

On the eighth day with no change, Gabriel traded places with Bobby and pulled Henry aside. "What's that last trial again?"

"Curing a demon."

"Which requires that we first trap a demon."

"Right."

"We don't need John for that part. So here's what I'm thinking. We grab our demon, set up someplace safe—say, the abandoned church in Stull Cemetery—and then I get John back on his feet long enough to finish it."

"I suppose that works, but why Stull? Isn't there someplace closer?"

Gabriel looked at him oddly. "You're a Man of Letters and you don't know about Stull?!"

Henry blinked as he tried to remember.

"There's a hellmouth there—and not just any hellmouth. It's one that connects to Lucifer's Cage, _and_ it's supposed to be the site of the final showdown between Lucifer and Michael. I can't think of a better way to smack the destiny-mongers in the face than for John to shut Hell down from there."

"That close to a hellmouth, do we risk interference?"

"Not with me around."

Henry nodded slowly. "All right, sounds like a plan. What do we need?"

Gabriel snapped his fingers, and a list appeared in Henry's hand. "You have half an hour to get everything on that list, including the shackles. And... go!" He snapped his fingers again, and Henry found himself back in the bunker in Kansas.

Shaking off his surprise, Henry made a mad dash through the bunker, collecting spell ingredients (easy) and trying to find the warded chains (not). After about fifteen minutes, however, _Try Room 7B_ appeared next to the word _chains_, which was all the hint he needed to find the hidden chamber with the devil's trap and, yes, chains. He had just stuffed everything into a satchel when he found himself back in Omaha with Gabriel smiling at him in approval.

"Everything's here," Henry reported. "Now what?"

Gabriel clapped him on the shoulder. "Now, you come with me."

This time they walked down to what appeared to be the morgue. Gabriel snapped his fingers again as they approached, disabling the security cameras and sending all of the nearby personnel to sleep. There was an intact body on the table, an unidentified dark-haired young woman who had just died. At Gabriel's direction, Henry laid out the summoning supplies and chains on and around the table and the body itself. Gabriel then did something Henry didn't catch to the rest of the room, studied the layout, and then glanced at Henry and did a double-take.

"Oop. Hold up." Gabriel pushed a finger against Henry's upper chest, just to the left of the breastbone, and Henry gasped as he felt a shock like being zapped with a cattle prod. "There. That'll ensure the demon doesn't go into you instead of Susie the Stiff. And before you ask, the hex bag you're carrying is a good idea, but it doesn't help much when you summon the demon into the room you're standing in."

"What'd you do?" Henry wheezed.

"Tattoo. Don't worry, it won't wash off."

Henry was Not Impressed.

"Hey, I give you one now, your grandkids won't need one in twenty years. Now get on with it."

Henry sighed, pulled himself together, and recited the summoning. And whatever Gabriel's precautions were, they paid off; the demon smoke that billowed up from the floor when he lit the mixture in the bowl circled the room twice before flowing into the body on the table. Yet no sooner had the young lady's eyes opened, solid black, than Gabriel snapped his fingers again. The shackles immediately attached themselves to her neck, wrists, and ankles, and a brand Henry didn't recognize appeared on her forearm.

She screamed and sat up, looking wildly at the chains and then at Henry and Gabriel. "DAMN YOU, LOKI!" she shrieked.

"Put a sock in it, Megara," Gabriel shot back. "If you're a good girl, you'll live through this."

"Oh, but I'm not a good girl. I'm a demon."

"And you're stuck."

"I'll find a way out of here. All you've done is give me a way to get topside so I can find the man who killed my father!"

"What a coinkydink. He wants to have a few words with you. Henry, get her out of here; we'll meet you and Jim down there. Oh—" Gabriel snapped his fingers one more time, and Megara's hospital gown was replaced by street clothes in the latest fashion. "Might need those."

"Oh, look at you, Mr. Considerate," she mocked.

Henry grabbed her elbow. "All right, chickie, let's go."

She tried to pull away from him, but to no avail, and he pulled her to her feet and marched her to the elevator. Jim was waiting for him upstairs, and together they escorted her out to the car and took off for Stull.

As Henry drove up to the cemetery three and a half hours later, heartily tired of Megara's taunts but not tired enough to give her the satisfaction of taunting back, he finally remembered some discussion among the Letters about goings-on here. The consensus back then had been that any genuine infernal events were low-grade, certainly no more than a Class 2, and thus best left to hunters to deal with. Henry couldn't help wondering how they had failed to learn of Stull's true significance—and how many other potentially disastrous gaps in their knowledge might exist.

Jim left Henry to guard Megara while he prepared the interior of the church for the trial, during which time she speculated aloud about everything from his origins to his choice of bedmates. He was nearing the end of his patience when Jim returned, spray paint still in hand, to help him haul her inside before completing the devil's trap.

She snorted as Henry pushed her into a chair set in the middle of the center aisle and Jim closed the gap in the line near her feet. "You know how easy it would be to break that, right? This old wood floor's not too solid."

"I wouldn't advise you to try," Jim returned mildly. "I hear the spellwork on those chains would keep the King of Hell on lockdown." Then he tossed the spray can to Henry. "Go see if they're here yet, would you?"

Henry nodded and took the spray paint back to the car. No sooner had he closed the trunk again than Gabriel and John appeared. John still looked horrible, but he was standing on his own and managed a smile.

"Hey, Pops," John said quietly.

"John." Henry hugged him. "You had us worried."

"I'll make it. Wanted to... to talk to you a minute before we go in, 'case I'm not up to it later."

"Okay. Shoot."

"Bill's staying with the boys right now, but he says you've been real good with them this week."

Henry's stomach clenched. "They're good boys."

"I'm... I'm remembering a lot more of the good now, from... from before. Think I was so mad when you disappeared 'cause I loved you so much."

"John, I—"

"We've been over it. I get it. And I'm sorry now I spent so long hating your guts because I didn't understand."

"Oh, John. You know I forgive you."

John took a deep breath. "What I'm... tryin' to say is... when... I want you to have them. Them and the car—it goes to Dean when he's sixteen. And the Colt goes back to Daniel Elkins, as you know. That's about all I got left."

Henry nodded slowly as he searched for something to say. "Does Bill know?" he finally asked.

John nodded. "Yeah. We talked it over for a minute. He thinks that's best. Give the boys a better place than the Roadhouse, safer, no younger kids or anything like that."

"I don't know how well I'll do alone."

"You don't have to, Pops. Remarry if you want. If you don't... you've got Jim, Bobby, Rufus, Bill and Ellen."

"Me," Gabriel volunteered with a wink.

Henry chuckled but sobered quickly. "You do have good friends, son. I'm sorry I judged all hunters by the few I knew before." He drew a ragged breath before continuing shakily, "And I'll do the best I can for your sons."

"All I ask, Pops," John replied as he pulled Henry into another hug. "'S all I ask."

And Henry lost it. He clung to John and wept, and John shed a few silent tears of his own.

"I'm sorry," John whispered after a long moment. "For everything."

"I forgive you," Henry whispered back and sniffled. "And I'm so sorry I failed you."

"Aw, Pops. I forgave you weeks ago."

"I know. I... I just h-had to say it."

John rubbed his back. "I love you."

"I love you, too, son. And I'm so proud of you." Henry sniffled some more and finally pulled himself together enough to release John. "All right, Corporal Winchester. One last battle."

John ducked his head and smiled. Then he, too, took a deep bracing breath and turned to Gabriel. "Um. Do I..."

Gabriel shook his head. "No, your last confession's still good. But fair warning: Meg is Azazel's daughter and heir. She'll be a tough nut to crack."

John nodded and held out his hand. "Thanks, Gabriel."

Gabriel shook hands and clapped John on the shoulder. "Go get 'em, Tiger."

John nodded once, took a deep breath, and strode into the church. Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Henry followed.

Inside, Megara was launching insult after catty comment at John, but John flatly ignored her. Rather, he made his way to the altar, picked up the syringe that Jim had placed there, and took off his watch and checked it before setting it down. Then he rolled up his sleeve, drew the first dose of blood, and checked his watch again.

"Ooh!" Megara said brightly as John turned around. "Are we having one of _those_ parties? I didn't think preachers came to _those_ parties, but hey, I'm up for anything. Besides, torturing a padre is always good for a laaa-ahhh-AUGH!" she broke off as John injected her with rather less care than he'd shown in injecting Sammy. "Dude, what the hell? Was that brown acid? That stuff burned!"

Still ignoring her, John went back to the altar, carefully cleaned the needle, and braced himself on the altar top. And a brief jolt of power, like what Henry had seen hit John the night the second trial ended, ran glowing up John's arms.

What followed was one of the worst nights of Henry's life as a father. John generally napped or ate between doses, often lying flat on a pew but sometimes sitting with his head on Henry's shoulder. But every dose wore him down a little more, and every jolt of power remained visible a little longer. There was little Henry or Jim could do, though, except keeping vigil with John; even had conversation or cards been safe without endangering the efficacy of John's confession, they could hardly hear themselves think over Megara's ceaseless stream of invective. That John was able to sleep at all was testament to how exhausted he was.

The first sign of change came about six hours in, when Megara finally worked out John's identity. She shrieked and spat and cursed for a good fifteen minutes and nearly bit John when he injected her again, and then she spouted threats and lies about Sammy for another fifteen, after which she launched into a long, rambling monologue about Azazel and what a devoted son of Lucifer he'd been, the plan he'd set in motion, and the unholy dystopia he'd planned to unleash on earth. After an hour and a half of that—or thereabout; Henry had failed to stay awake through the whole thing—she moved on to the qualities she had admired about Azazel and tried to emulate. Sometime after the next dose, those qualities became actual _qualities_ like determination and devotion, not vices like cruelty and deceit. It all came to a head nine hours in, when John injected her once more and she screamed in his face:

"I loved him! I loved him _and you killed him!_"

That statement echoed for a moment as Megara and John stared at each other in silence and Jim gripped Henry's shoulder in shock.

Then Megara made a small noise that might have been a hiccup or a sob. "He was my father," she said more quietly. "I loved him."

John finally broke his silence with a barely audible, "I know."

And she let out an ear-piercing keen and began to sob uncontrollably.

Half an hour later, a black woman came running into the church and made straight for John. "Lands!" Henry could just barely hear her say under Megara's wailing. "I heard that screech clear in Lawrence!" Then, before John could say anything, the woman pulled him into a bear hug.

"'M glad you're here, Missouri." Henry had to lip-read that; John's voice wasn't audible from where Henry was sitting.

The woman—Missouri?—rubbed John's back. "Oh, John. You're close, baby, you're so close. You keep pushin'. You got this."

John nodded.

Missouri thumped his back and bustled over to where Henry and Jim were sitting. "Lord bless you, brothers," she said tearfully, shaking hands with each of them in turn. "That boy needs all the strength you can give him."

Both men blinked, but Jim found his voice first. "Um. Thank you, Sister..."

"Missouri Mosely. I'm a psychic," she informed Henry, as if Jim should already know her name. "John came to me after the fire. And mercy, Henry, if you ain't the best medicine his poor heart could have."

Embarrassed, Henry cleared his throat. "Well—"

"Oh, you Winchesters! I could just slap you! You got to quit blamin' yourself, honey. I don't know if I coulda kept my cool so well in a situation like that. And besides, John done forgive you anyway."

John's amused snort carried much better than his voice had.

Megara howled again, and Missouri winced. "Can't hardly hear _myself_ think," she confessed more quietly. "I'll be outside. Bless you," she repeated, squeezing their hands in turn before hurrying out again.

John dropped down into the pew in front of them while they were still catching their breath.

"Was that a woman or a force of nature?" Jim asked him.

John chuckled fondly. "That's Missouri."

Megara cried herself out by the end of the hour and was silent through the next two doses. But the quiet wasn't peaceful; indeed, it was almost harder to bear than her incessant yammering had been. Henry could hear everything from the slight snore John had developed as he dozed to the crackle of power that ran up his arms every time he injected Megara. It took every ounce of strength Henry had to hold himself together and keep watch.

There was nothing else he could do, anyway.

"Why did I love him?" Megara wondered aloud somewhere around the middle of Hour 13. "He turned me. He _tortured_ me. He... he didn't love me." And she began to cry again, more quietly this time. "Why did I follow him?"

John was dozing then and didn't answer.

When it came time for the next dose, Megara tilted her head to one side to make it easier for John to inject her. He did so—and the orange glow in his arms didn't fade this time.

"John?" she asked. "Do—is—is there a life out there for the likes of me? I mean, is... is there some cause out there I could fight for?"

"Only one way to find out," he replied and sliced open his palm.

Henry barely remembered to breathe.

John cautiously recited the altered exorcism and pressed his bloody hand against Megara's mouth. She sucked noisily, then exhaled a shaky sigh.

"It... it worked," she breathed. "I f-feel so _clean_."

Jim ran to unchain her as Henry ran to catch John, who was staggering backward toward the altar and on the brink of collapse. Just as Henry stopped his son's fall, Gabriel appeared beside them and gave John a burst of a different kind of power, but the glow in John's arms didn't abate.

"Outside," Gabriel said, pulling John more upright, and suddenly they _were_ outside. "Just a couple minutes more."

Henry looked around and saw a small crowd near them—Bobby, Bill and what looked like his wife and daughter, Sammy, Dean, Missouri, even Jim and Megara. John, with Henry's help, made his way around to give a parting hug to each adult and a kiss to Jo. And at the last, he dropped to his knees and held Sammy and Dean for a long moment.

"I love you boys," John whispered hoarsely. "And I'm proud of you. Be good for Grandpa."

The boys were too choked up to reply with more than a nod.

Gabriel gave John one more burst of power that enabled him to stand on his own and hug Henry before making his way slowly to the middle of the open area that seemed to hold the hellmouth. But when he got there, he looked back at Henry with tears in his eyes.

Henry swallowed hard and somehow found the strength to call, "Here's looking at you, kid."

John understood and smiled. And his voice was clear and strong as he recited, "_Kah-nuh-ahm-dahr._"

A mighty gust of wind whistled past the onlookers and slammed into John, twisting him around and driving him to his knees, whence he collapsed flat on his face and lay still. There was a pause in which Henry could almost swear he heard a distant heart monitor: _Bip. Bip. Bip. Bip. Beeeeee—_

And all that orange-gold energy that had built up in John's body finally exploded, blowing past them in a massive shockwave that Henry would later hear reached clear around the globe, forcing demons from their hosts and collapsing or covering long-rumored hellmouths. All he could think to do at the moment was to drop to his knees and pull his grandsons tight against his chest, shielding them as best he could as their world was literally rocked to its foundations.

When at last all was still, Henry finally dared to look up... but there was nothing left of John.

"He made it," Bobby breathed. "The son of a gun, he did it."

"What did he do?" Megara cried in a panic. "_WHAT DID HE DO?!_"

But Henry couldn't hear any answer over the sound of his and his boys' hearts breaking.

* * *

"Damn," John breathed when the flash cleared.

Tessa nodded. "Yep. It consumed your flesh completely. Nothing remains to tie you here naturally."

"And now?"

"Well, you still have the choice to stay or go, but I can't be sure what you'd haunt. And humans can still go to Hell when they die, though demons can't get out. The Fall of humankind can't be undone with merely human sacrifice. But your boys are safe from demons, and Mary is waiting for you."

John considered. "One last goodbye?"

"Sure."

John turned to Pops and the boys, who were huddled together and crying their eyes out. He ran his hand through Sammy's hair, then Dean's, then squeezed Pops' shoulder. "Here's looking at you, kid," he echoed. Then he pulled himself together and turned back to Tessa. "Let's go."

"I can't promise what you'll find up here," she warned as she pulled him Heavenward. "Mary might not be the first thing you see, at least not the real Mary. But if all you find at first is a memory, follow the Road. You'll find her."

John smiled. "Thanks, Tessa."


	8. Epilogue: The Beginning of

Epilogue  
The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

_October 12, 1997_

Dean hated this time of year.

It had been bad enough having Mom's death hanging over them every November 2. But Dad's death ten years ago just cast a pall over the entire month of October. Grandpa and Sammy and Dean still tried to go out to Stull to pay their respects every year at this time, and sometimes there were other hunters there doing the same thing, which gave them a chance to visit. Sometimes Gabriel would show up. So would Meg, who'd joined the ranks of hunters. Once there was even a vampire couple who'd gone vegetarian thanks to Dad, which was... strangely cool. But mostly, the pain of losing Dad overwhelmed everything else, even now. Not to mention Halloween—sure, it was safer now, with Hell locked down, but there were still plenty of things out there to hunt, and a lot of them still liked to come out and play around this time of year.

Sometimes Dean would take a hunt with Bobby just for the distraction. Sometimes Sam would go with them. Grandpa never tried to stop them.

Dean still didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. Growing up learning about the Men of Letters and everything they had to teach was cool, and Sam really loved it, but Dean also relished the thrill of getting to go out and save people and hunt things. Grandpa admitted once that he hadn't liked hunters all that much until he'd found Dad again and met Bobby, but when Dean explained what it was he liked about hunting, Grandpa seemed to understand and even approve. But Bobby approved of the Letters, too, especially once Grandpa gave him a standing invitation to come do research in their library, and he'd become the unofficial liaison between the Letters and hunters. Dean didn't know if it would work to keep one foot in both worlds, but he figured it wouldn't hurt to try, at least for a while.

He did know he wasn't going to college and wasting his life in suburbia. Too much messed-up stuff happened in cities, and suburbs were for chumps. In that, he was very much his father's son.

Today, though, he was faced with the more mundane task of picking up groceries for the week. He was searching the shelves for some weird thing Sammy wanted to try when a copper blur flashed past his peripheral vision, and he turned to find a red-haired girl who couldn't have been much more than twelve hiding behind a display on the side near him, crouched low and peering fearfully past its edge to see if she was being pursued.

"Hey," he said quietly. "You okay?"

She looked up at him, and her face was strangely familiar. "I'm not here," she stage-whispered.

"What—"

"_Cops_."

Abandoning the cart, he nonchalantly started browsing down the aisle past the display, which gave him a better vantage point from which to keep a lookout. And he watched as a couple of plainclothes officers came in, spoke to the clerks, didn't get the answer they were looking for, and left. Then he found something he genuinely did need and brought it back to the cart. "All clear," he told the girl.

She sagged against the shelves in relief.

"What'd you do?"

"Hacked a video game. Well, stole it, hacked it, and released it for free."

His lips pursed in a silent impressed whistle. But something about the way she'd said that reminded him of something else, and he thought he finally recognized her. "Wait, is it D-Darl—"

"Charlie," she answered quickly. "Charlie Bradbury, and I'm not from Topeka, and you don't know me, and I've very definitely never been to Disneyland. And I like girls," she added defensively.

He crouched in front of her so as to be more at eye level. "Where are your parents?"

Her face fell. "Dad's dead. Mom's in a coma. And it's my fault."

"How do you mean?"

"I was at a sleepover. I got scared, and I asked them to come get me. And on their way, they had a wreck."

He pulled her into a hug. "I'm sorry."

She hugged him back and cried for a moment.

"Kinda know what it's like. Lost my parents a while back, too."

"Sorry."

He rubbed her back briefly and let her go. "You got someplace to stay?"

She shook her head.

He almost offered to take her to a motel or something, but then he remembered what she'd said about the video game and had an idea. "Listen. Do you dig, like, fantasy games and stuff?"

She nodded.

"What if I told you that monsters are real?"

Her eyes widened.

"And me and my brother, we hunt them. Sometimes."

Her eyes widened more.

"But we're also part of this secret society called the Men of Letters."

"Well, that's sexist."

He chuckled. "Only 'cause the last woman was killed, like, forty years ago."

"Ooh. Yikes."

"Yeah. But me and Sam, we live with our grandpa in this really cool bunker. It's like the Batcave, man. It's got this huge library and a shooting range and everything."

Her eyes lit up.

"Would you—don't take this the wrong way or anything—but would you want to come live with us, maybe join the Letters? Kinda stinks bein' in a club with only three people. And, like, there's enough rooms that you could have your own space, not..."

"Not have to share with guys?"

"Right."

She considered. "Is it a cool library?"

"It's got _scrolls_."

She squeaked happily and hugged him again. "Okay. I'm in."

He helped her up. "Where's your stuff?"

She pointed to her backpack.

He nodded. "Awesome. Go out the back; I'll finish here and come pick you up."

"Okay. Thanks—"

"Dean."

"Dean. Spiff. I'll..." She pointed toward the back of the store with her thumbs and took off.

As he quickly finished his own shopping, he wondered how she even remembered him from Disneyland. She couldn't have been more than two, _maybe_ three, at the time. But he and Sammy had thought she was cool then, and she didn't seem to have changed, so it stood to reason that she'd be cool now. He didn't mind helping a friend disappear, and he couldn't think of a better place to disappear into than a bunker you couldn't even really see until you walked up to it.

Something told him D—Charlie wouldn't be the last stray he'd bring home to the Letters. Hell, maybe someday he'd even bring home a wife. Maybe Sam would, too. But that bunker was made to be lived in, and the Letters' legacy needed to be revived somehow. And maybe... maybe having Charlie around would make October a little less gloomy for all of them.

A quote from _Casablanca_ crossed his mind and made him chuckle as he left the checkout: _Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship_. Then he put the groceries in the Impala and drove back to pick Charlie up, whistling "La Marseillaise."


End file.
